Requests for new languages/Wiktionary Nias
| submitted | verification | final decision |
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This proposal has been approved. The Board of Trustees and language committee have deemed that there is sufficient grounds and community to create the new language project. A committee member provided the following comment: |
- 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 | nia (SIL, Glottolog) | A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ... |
| Language name | Nias | Language name in English |
| Language name | Li Niha | 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 | Q2407831 - item has currently the following values:
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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)? |
| Site URL | nia.wiktionary.org | langcode.wikiproject.org |
| Settings | ||
|---|---|---|
| Project name | Wiktionary | "Wiktionary" in your language |
| Project namespace | Wiktionary | usually the same as the project name |
| Project talk namespace | Huhuo Wiktionary | "Wiktionary 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 | File:Wiktionary-logo-v2-nia.svg | This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation). |
| Default project timezone | Asia/Jakarta | "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. | ||
Proposal
[edit]The Nias language is an Austronesian language spoken on the Nias island and some adjacent islands off the west coast of Sumatra. The native speakers call it Li Niha and in Indonesian, it is called bahasa Nias.
According to the latest data (2019), Nias had a population of 825.768[1] which is the number of people who speak Nias natively. However, since many Nias people live outside the Nias island, mainly in Sumatra, especially in high numbers in the hinterlands of Sibolga and Padang, the number of people who speak Nias must be higher.
There are three major speech varieties of Nias (some say there are five), which some call dialects, i.e. northern, central and southern varieties. Historically only the northern variety found its way to printed media, when Christian missionaries printed the Bible in the Nias language more than a hundred years ago. Lacking access to other parts of the island at that time, missionaries set up their office in Gunungsitoli, the main town on the island and started publishing in that speech variety. This speech variety written in the Roman alphabet has become the commonly accepted written form of Nias, although in 2020 churches in the Nias island are working on different editions of the Bible accommodating other speech varieties.
It is a common perception among many enthusiasts that Nias as a language is at risk of being endangered in the digital age. The scholar who wrote the grammar of the southern variety, Lea Brown, sounded such warning already twenty years ago.[2] Unfortunately, despite all the warnings and concerns expressed by many others, there has not been any official institution (government or public) that shows interest for the development of the Nias language.
Wikipedia Li Niha started in 2012 and Wiktionary Li Niha followed in 2020. Only recently both projects have attracted attention of Nias contributors, who are language enthusiasts, who had started a group to establish a long term plan to preserve, develop and promote the Nias language.
This group of mixed backgrounds (from professors to students, IT practitioners, priests and other volunteers) aims to be able to document and to promote the Nias language by setting up some standards. One way that we can do is bringing the language into the digital age by creating new words or by reviving old words with new concepts to make it easier to converse in the Nias language in this age of the Internet and social media.
Moreover, we are trying to raise awareness of public and government of the need to teach the Nias language at schools and to create an institution that can promote the language. In both cases, Wikipedia and Wiktionary Li Niha can certainly help to make the Nias language the language of young generations, who only learn and study the Indonesian language at school and university. In long term, the Wikipedia and Wiktionary Li Niha can become the prominent place to preserve and to find Nias language related content.
- ↑ Badan Pusat Statistik Kota Gunungsitoli, Jumlah Penduduk dan Rumah Tangga Menurut Kabupaten/Kota di Propinsi Sumatera Utara Tahun 2016-2019.
- ↑ niasonline.net, Li Niha – the Essence of the Culture, Tradition and History of the Nias People
Supporters
[edit]- Support I'm support this language. Because it is an language in Indonesia and you know Indonesia are the 2nd of the largest country by language in the world after Papua New Guinea and the 4th largest country by population and the biggest country from culture Semuel Tahun (talk)
- Support - it has a lively community of dedicated editors Danu Widjajanto (talk) 13:03, 5 December 2020 (UTC)~
- Support -- Si Gam (talk) 13:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Settings
[edit]User:Yasanto Lase, User:Agusti lase, User:Slaia, User:Gulö, Yosafati and other contributors: Langcom intends to approve the creation of Nias Wikipedia and Wiktionary soon. For that, could you please check whether the settings the table at the beginning of the page are all correct (such as the localized project name, the logo, the timezone, …)? Please also see the general question about namespace translations at Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Nias. --MF-W 16:00, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
Does "Wiktionary Li Niha" mean "Wiktionary in Nias"? Should that really be the name of the project? For comparison, English Wiktionary just has "Wiktionary", not "English Wiktionary" at that place. --MF-W 13:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
- Wiktionary Li Niha means simply Wiktionary in Nias language. Okay I will correct the project name to Wiktionary only. Thanks. Slaia (talk) 13:56, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
User:Slaia: please note that the logo needs to be in SVG format. --MF-W 18:23, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
- My mistake. It's done now. Thank you MF-W for this. Slaia (talk) 20:39, 17 December 2020 (UTC)