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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Swabian

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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.

A committee member provided the following comment:

At minimum, the request is stale. And over the years since this request was opened, Swabian has been well-established as a section of the Alemannic Wikipedia, with 869 main space pages in Swabian at the time I write this. At the present time, there is no point in considering a separate project. For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 14:54, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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 swg (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Swabian Language name in English
Language name Schwäbisch 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 Q327274 - item has currently the following values:
 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 no indication Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL swg.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Wikipedia "Wikipedia" in your language
Project namespace usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace "Wikipedia talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads yes 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 This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone "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
submit Phabricator task. It will include everything automatically, except additional namespaces/settings. After creating the task, add a link to the comment.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Arguments in favour edit

    • There are more than 4 million speakers of Swabian; mainly in the region of Swabia. Swabia covers much of Germany's southwestern Bundesland state of Baden-Württemberg (including the capital Stuttgart and the rural area known as the Swabian Alb) and the southwest of the Bundesland Bavaria.
    • Swabian is also spoken by part of the German minorities in Hungary, former Yugoslavia, Romania, and the former Soviet Union.
    • Swabian is difficult to understand for speakers of Standard German. It contains vocabulary that differs altogether from Standard German (e.g. 'jam' in Standard German is Marmelade while in Swabian it becomes Gsälz).
    —unsigned by 202.36.179.66 on 01:32, 19 September 2008.
  • Per above reasons. All minority languages should get a chance. --OosWesThoesBes 16:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Swabian can be very different from the other dialects that the Alemanic Wikipedia includes.
  • Persons speaking Swabian as their first language really never can speak German without "mistakes".
  • The offical slogan, crated by the government of Baden-Württemberg and well known all over Germany is: "Wir können alles - außer Hochdeutsch" (We do can all - without standard German).
  • When a Swabian is reading a text in Swiss German (a variety of alemannic), he often has to think about words for a long time to understand them and sometimes he can't, even if it's his habit to read texts in that language/dialect. Putting Swiss German and Swabian in one Wikipedia together is like doing the same with Welsh and Breton. Nearly nobody here in Württemberg says that he speaks an Alemanic dialect, but Swabian. We're an independent group of dialect speakers! Xammax 17:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Welsh and Breton are far more apart than Swabian from other Alemanic dialects. Speaking neither Swabian nor any other Alemanic dialect, I have no significant problems in understanding both. Welsh and Breton fall into two different families (Goidelic vs Brythonic) which split more than 2000 years ago. --AFBorchert 17:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, that was a bad example. But don't think that you can understand the "real hard" Swabian of the Schwäbische Alb. The Swabian used in the articles that exist yet is one which isn't very far from standard German, but there are others.Xammax 20:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know where AFBorchert got that from, but Welsh and Breton are both Brythonic languages. Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic are Goidelic. Saimdusan 08:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Saimdusan, you are right. Still, Welsh and Breton fall into Western and Proto-Southwestern Brythonic which split in the 6th century. --AFBorchert 08:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against edit

The traditional distribution area of Western Upper German (=Alemannic) dialect features in the 19th and 20th century. This maps shows the region of Alemannic languages including Swabian in the upper right (light blue). Compare this against the map at the main page.
The Alemannic Wikipedia already covers the Swabian dialects, as is clearly stated on its main page. Additionaly, Swabian is generally mentioned in guidelines and the protocol of the most recent meeting in August 2008 also makes mention of it. Swabian and the other Alemannic dialects are usually mutually intelligible without too many problems (I speak high Alemannic from southern Baden and my mother's Swabian family has no trouble understanding me); Swabian and the other Alemannic variants have way more similiarities than differences. On top of that, there are 65 articles in our category for articles written in Swabian [1], though the actual number is higher because not all articles are categorized by dialect. These articles are also of considerably higher quality and length than the ones written so far on the incubator (one, Raveschburg, is even a featured article), and Swabian articles are regularly featured on the main page as "article of the week". There is no need to invent the wheel twice. --Chlämens 13:25, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

General discussion edit

  • Why was this request verified as eligible even though it goes against requisite 3. "The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki."? The Swabian dialects are clearly coexisting on the Alemannic Wikipedia, where there are plenty of Swabian-speaking contributors (the most active being Henri Berger). The main page is available in Swabian ([2]), and Swabian articles make it on the main page as "article of the week" roughly every 2-3 months. Why, just yesterday someone added a new article in Swabian: als:Meteorologie! Terfili 10:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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