Language committee/Reports/2012-07

This is the language committee report for July 2012.

Questions to the readers:

Do you read the Langcom reports regularly?
Do you find them informative? Are they comprehensive enough? Do you feel well-informed about the Langcom's proceedings?
Any comments, questions, criticism?

The Langcom has discussed to join the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity of Google's Endangered languages project. In the wish to act as a connection between the Wikimedia community and the project, we have applied on 25 July, mentioning Wikimedia's significant resources related to preserving languages, e.g. Wikisource, Wiktionary and Incubator.

Following a question from one of the contributors, the status of the Oriya Wikiquote (test wiki) was discussed, but more activity and message translation work is required there before approval can be considered.
The request for a Wikipedia in Gorkha has been withdrawn by the proposer. It is also not eligible per our policies.
Assamese Wikisource (cf. last month's report) was brought up again: Translations are now finished, but the activity is not high/steady enough yet.
The request to close Lojban Wiktionary has been rejected.
The request to close Basa Sunda Wikibooks is currently undergoing Board review and will probably be accepted.

It has been discussed whether it could be allowed to use another code for the URL of the Wikipedia in Mapundungun (test project: incubator:Wp/arn), for example of the codes that is reserved for "private use" in the ISO 639-3 scheme (it would e.g. be qmp.wikipedia.org instead of arn.wikipedia.org then); because the ISO code "arn" derives from a word which is claimed to be seen as offensive by the speakers of the language. No decision was taken, but
- Some members tended to accept such a thing, others tended to rule out such a deviation from the ISO standard. The general importance of the standard was highlighted.
- Most members would like organizations/speakers of the language to try to get the ISO code changed first, but it was also noted that such a change would be very unlikely to be accepted.
- The details of why/how the code is considered offensive by the speakers were discussed. It is generally agreed that the code will not be changed for political reasons. Currently, the president of Wikimedia Chile has been contacted and will try to get statements from these NGOs and Universities.