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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Insubric

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Insubric Wikipedia

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.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

Insubric is not an ISO recognized linguistic entity and insubric native speakers already have their space in lmo.wikipedia.--Bèrto 'd Sèra 19:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal summary
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Arguments in favour

    • There is a great literature (born in XIII century, with apex in XIX), especially Milanese poetry and theatre (it has his own genres, like Bosinada)
    • The most important writers in Insubric are Carlo Porta, Carlo Maria Maggi, Bonvesin de la Riva, Delio Tessa, Balestrieri, Bossi, Giulini, Grossi, Parini..., and a valuable literature is till alive in all Insubria
    • Insubric is very different from Italian language and Orobic language, and it isn't mutually comprehensible with them. This is due to the fact that the Orobic area had been under Venetian repubblic for a long time, in the same period the insubric was part of the spanish influence.
    • Insubric has an official writing standard (Circolo Filologico Milanese) for Milanese variant (the most authoritative and important in literature; it's sometimes used by the Insubrics as koinè), that could be used as service language
    • It's not correct the presence of just one only Lombardian Wikipedia, in which two languages families must cohabit with problems of standards of dictionary and grammar rules, causing reciprocal misunderstanding or not understanding at all.
    • The other variants of Insubric language (Brianzöö, Bosin, Ticinese, Valtellinese, Nuaresat, Cumàsch, Pavese-Lodigiano, Büstocu-Legnanes...) have authoritative standards of writing and of grammar, like Ticinese one (Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia del Cantone Ticino)
    —unsigned by Codice1000 14:08, 13 February 2007.
  • It is a language used not only in some Italian regions, but also in portion of the Swiss's Ticinese Canton. —unsigned by Bramfab 14:52, 13 February 2007.
  • It's spoken by about 5,000,000 people in Western Lombardy, in Province of Novara, in some villages of Sicily, in Canton Ticino and nearest places —unsigned by 84.223.79.247 18:44, 16 February 2007.
    This argument is under discussion.
  • There are many Dictionaries and Grammars of the main variants Mausolo 17:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • When the Lombardian language has been subjet to a deep analysis (G.Hull: The linguistic unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, Sidney, 1982) it results that there is a clear subdivion and differentation between Insubric and Orobic. Of course both languages are more close compared to Neapolitan (of course), but each of those presents some pecularities giving the fact that the Adda river, still now, acts as a language border.--Bramfab 22:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against

  • There is not even recognition for this dialect of Lombard in the provisional data available to me for the ISO-639-6. GerardM 21:03, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    That's because it's more widely known as Western Lombard. --Node ue 02:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    But the Lombard Wiki [1] is not enough ? It's time to collaborate, not to divide. -- Dragonòt
    Western and eastern Lombard are different, with no doubt. So, it would be better if eastern and western Lombard could create their own edition of wikipedia. I've heard many users from eastern Lombardy disappointed by lmo.wiki for the simple reason that the service language was western Lombard. They said "well, we are Lombard too, but the Lombard we speak (eastern) has little in common with the western. So, we do not take part in this project." --Remulazz 11:23, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Against. Not even one of the criteria 1 to 5 in WM:LPP is fulfilled. Milanese is not part of Insubric. Insubric means only Ticinese+Northern Western Lombard: moreover, this denomination is by no means scientifically documented (not taken into account by ISO or UNESCO).

    This move rather seems a political one, aimed at destroying Lombard wikipedia, which, so far, had a sound success: there are eastern and western users happily collaborating and even learning to write in the dialects of each other: this is what de facto happened, and it is largely documented. So, what's this request? Simple: that's the (perhaps unconscious) will of destroying something running very well. (cupio dissolvi?) And the 'with no doubt' argument (Western and eastern Lombard are different, with no doubt) shows a worrying lackness of ideas. I dare recalling that one of the above users offered the following edit summary while moving w:en:Western Lombard to Insubric (and including within Insubric even the dialect of Pavia province!): The denomination "Western Lombard" lets think to a simple variant of Lombard, while "Insubric" defines more precisely and absolutely this language. So, these users have:

    • no doubts, and think about themselves as being
    • absolutely right.

    Summarising: they simply do not want to share the same place with someoene else who is slightly different: this will of separatism shouldn't take place here. Wikimedia projects are about collaboration, not separatism. As to the so called service language: it is easily extendable to cope with much more dialects, by using tamplates, as it was explicitely proposed more than two years ago (There is still an open page about this). There are probably more articles in eastern Lombard than in Western Lombard. Moreover the sitenotice, to prevent the raise of such a sentiment, is first in eastern Lombard and then in Western Lombard. Besides: the above motivations like: "They said "well, we are Lombard too, but the Lombard we speak (eastern) has little in common with the western. So, we do not take part in this project." are not documented, as, on the contrary, the number of articles in eastern Lombard at LMO:WP is. In my view, again, this is politics, a sad and bad politics, as a Swiss user correctly pointed out a bit of time ago. Bests--clamengh 19:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I really would like to know where is this sound success: 15.000 articles, of which 12.000 nearly empty and created with a robot (have a look at the Depth column on meta: 0).

    • We have a Tarantine edition of the Wikipedia, even if Tarantine is a part of the so-called Neapolitan language.
    • This request is a will to destroy an oligarchic project, written in some invented variant (Koyné de la Ferovia??????) and ortographies of some Lombard dialect, at the limit of the original research, forbidden on Wikipedia. Calling it Insubric or Western Lombard is roughly the same thing, as for me. The really important thing is stopping lmo.wiki, a nonsense project, with three or four users.
    • Your dear swiss users told I was a Nazist just because I dared to say that eastern and western Lombard had some difference between them. That was my sad and bad politics, and this answer represents yours.
    • Can I remember you that Cisalpine tongues are endangered because all Northern Italians speak italian as first language (you included, even if in your userpage you didn't put the {{Babel-it}}
    • You and your dear friend 10caart simply want to keep in life an empty project. That's the truth.

    Good luck for your lmo.wiki, --Remulazz 16:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Dear user, you are free of knowing nothing about Lombard tongue, as you show here. Please document yourself in Dario Petrini, La koiné Ticinese, Ed Francke, Bern. --Moch 12:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    The articles have not been created with a robot, they have been uploaded with a robot! I know this well, because I have collaborated to the creation!. And you really seem to call on segregation!)
    [regarding orthography] Same as above even you are free to ignore: 'Unified orthography' as been published in the prestigiuos BOLLETTINO STORICO ALTA VALTELLINA no 6. --Moch 12:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose The words of these users seem to show that they do not know very well what a language is, nor do they seem to have the faintest idea of the notion of mutual intelligibility. It is not my job to teach this to them, but I can suggest an interesting reading:

    • Komarova-Nyogi: Optimising the mutual intelligibility of linguistic agents in a shared world, AI-154,2004, 1-42.

    As to Lombard language, an extended bibliography is provided at English wikipedia, at the end of the homonymous article. Clamengh's arguments are essentially right, even if Insubric is maybe a little bit more restricted: Alpine dialects of Tessin and Graubünden should be not thought of as Insubric ones (In Val Mesolcina there is no ü, let alone ö, for example). I admit I could have worked more at the eastern version of the interface (so I will start to do this), and I have always refused to be nominated sysop as Clamengh often proposed me: but this stuff can be easily changed, if needed: and I understand Western Lombard perfectly (I have even written some simple articles in the so called 'Tessiner railway koiné'). To put it bluntly, simply I don't believe Remulazz' words about Orobic users who don't want to take part: my friends say, on the contrary, that they would like, but (among those who 'have-time-enough') they are not able to write. This is no surprise, since analphabetism in Lombard should be thought of as amounting at 98%, as for Piedmontese language (You can find the exact reference by starting from PMS:WP's main page).

    So, summarising:

    • Over a potential basin of 10.000.000 Lombard speakers, you shouldn't rely upon more than 1.000.000 speakers, whose number is rapidly decreasing (according to UNESCO we are an endangered language);
    • 2% upon 10.000.000 means 200.000 potential writers, if I am not wrong.
    • Remove those who have not time, those who do not have the faintest idea of writing for free etc, and you can easily conclude that it is not the point for any kind of splitting.

    A further strong motivation is that the external judge of these kind of questions is ISO (compare Wikimedia's No original research policy): and the present ISO's subdivision of the Rhaeto-Cisalpine domain (see G.Hull: The linguistic unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, Sidney, 1982) into LIJ, PMS, LMO, ROH, LLD, VEC, FUR, EML is a reasonable compromise: if this equilibrium came to be perturbed, the opposite question would naturally arise, i.e. the unification of the above Wikipedias. Finally, let me add three personal notes:

    • One of the above user has been banned from LMO:WP because of normal vandalism upon Babel templates and abusing people from Southern Italy; everything has been reported at his user page. He has also recently proposed the closure of Lombard wikipedia, here at meta. If I am not wrong, this fact should prevent him from requesting a new wiki.
    • One of the above users stated that I was a sockpuppet of Clamengh, without even knowing the existence of the checkuser feature, and never apologized for this.
    • One of the above users posed his (legitimate!) candidature at sysop at LMO:WP, with ...0 edits and without telling that to anyone.

    --10caart 09:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Simply I strongly don't believe that comments about the personality of some proposers and oppositors should be considered in order to judge about the existence of a significant difference between Insubric and the Orobic.--Bramfab 21:47, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. The proponents seem dramatically unaware of their actions: of their own free will or not, they aim at destruction of Lombard tongue, this easily implying the impossibility of spreading knowledge in that language. This fact results in being contrary to the spirit of Wikimedia. Maybe the personality of the proponents is not at stake, but should we forget that, in Varese county, in Italy, local elections are scheduled, so the suspect arises that all this deals with some kind of political propoganda?

    1. First of all Insubric is not a scientifically accepted denomination (nor is it by ISO, not is western Lombard);
    2. Insubric is a shortened popular way to refer jointly to the dialects of Como, Varese counties and Lower Tessin Canton.
    3. Milanese is by no means Insubric in this sense (and, unfortunately, it is by no means... anything but a dead language; and so is going to be Insubric at least on the Italian side of the border).
    4. Nor are, a fortiori Pavese and southern dialects.
    5. Not even should be thought of as Insubric the so called Railway Koiné (sometimes called Western koiné), which is a typically Tessiner phenomenon.
    6. The proponents seem to ignore that, while there's a linguistic border in the lowlands along the river Adda, western dialects continuosly turn into eastern ones through Valtellina in the Alps, with no precise border.

    So, what are these gentlemen trying to do? Simple: aware or not, they are playing the divide et impera game. That's the history of Lombardy, sometimes playing this game against itself, but this is not the matter: a Wikimedia project is not about (conscious or unconcious) politics.

    Just to consider at which kind of scientific driteria this project is informed, one of the proponents stated Nature made Bergamasque people different from us. (!!!)

    On the contrary, the actual present experience at LMO.WP is very fine:

    • people generally agree (see archived discussions);
    • each one freely writes in her/his own dialect and preferred orthography (everyone is only kindly asked to offer a key of lecture for her/his orthography); one can also write in another dialect from his/her own;
    • some superdialectal articles have also emerged (and these ones well witness the unity of our language, Lombard tongue);
    • there's room for everybody (Only one (!) user banned from September 2005, in my knowledge).

    Simple, isn't it? Summing up,

    1. There's no reason to breake a well running project;
    2. LMO.WP is another evidence of the fact that ISO classification is right (if needed: ISO is based in Switzerland!);
    3. Splitting would increase conflictuality and diminish freedom of each Lombard user of expressing him/herself in any dialect (simply beacuse wikipedia in that dialect most probably wouldn't have the strenght to exist), this being contrary to the spirit of wikimedia projects;
    4. Evidence has been shown of a possible political misuse of this page of wikimedia (local elections are scheduled just in the place concerned).

    This seems to me quite enough to reject this proposal. Bests,--Moch 11:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. I just would like to add my humble two cents to this surprising controversy. I am an Eastern Lombard speaker since the time of my childhood, and I am very proud of my mother-tongue but I can swear I really very seldom had problems in understanding people from Western Lombardy speaking their own dialects. Or, better, the level of difficulties was often lower than understanding Eastern Lombard varieties different from mine, and there are a lot.

    Again, up until now, I never contributed to the lmo.wk but the unique reason for this, is that the I have no time enough. But nothing prevents I can do it in the future.
    --Ninonino 14:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose These users are expected to contribute to Lombard wikipedia, if they are interested in Lombard tongue. Otherwise, all this would only mean wasting money: even if we, contributors to wikimedia projects, are volunteers, our work means money: each project costs money in terms of server time, developer job etc (even if not paid, it costs time!). So for example, we rather have to think how to cover Africa with free knowledge, rather than listening to western children whimming for a toy. But the statements above rather seem proving that this proposal is meant only to break something working. And wikipedians are not aimed at language destruction. (I warmly suggest this reading:

    • Claude Hagège: Halte à la morte des langues).

    From the book above, you can profitably learn what is language suicide and why this request almost exactly fits with its scientific definition. I recall that I am an eastern Lombard speaker, so I can easily contribute to the adaptation of the interface of LMO wiki; everything can be made in every dialect, so LMO wiki is a project maximizing freedom. I contributed to the creation of the recently automatically uploaded pages as well; unfortunately I am not able to use robots. Best regards,--OlBergomi 12:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose While it is true that there are visible phonetic differences between Western Lombard (Insubric) and Eastern Lombard (Orobic), the same applies inside these two larger sub-groups and every place has its specific charachteristics which wouldn't be taken into account by just two Lombard Wikipedias. The current solution consisting in using multiple dialects for the common Lombard Wikipedia is the only one which complies with the variety-in-unity charachter of Lombard and Lombardy. Any alternative solution would lead to a proliferation of Lombard Wikipedias which would weaken their significance and reduce to almost zero their number of articles.--158.169.9.14 10:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

General discussion

5 million speakers
5 million people would currently speak insubric? I strongly doubt about that. It's a dialect, and there is virtually no bibliography about it. The external link on it:Dialetto milanese is not relevant IMHO, since it simply contains it:Insubre (redirect to it:Dialetto lombardo occidentale) as a "see also" wikilink. --Brownout (msg) 19:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And, unfortunately, you are right, Sir: Lombard is, according to UNESCO a 'potentially endangered language, so it cannot have 5.000.000 speakers. (Perhaps the above behaviour is simply an epiphenomenon of this state of affairs). The only sociolinguistic studies containing some estimates about this matter are, in my knowledge:
  • Sandro Bianconi: Lingue di frontiera, Casagrande, Locarno, CH
  • Ph. Blondeau: Les dialectes and la conscience linguistique dans la province de Bergame, La Sorbonne FR (available at thèses à la carte, for about 100 €)
  • G.Zahner: Il dialetto della Val S.Giacomo, Vita e Pensiero, Milan IT.
  • Moretti, Bruno: Ai margini del dialetto : varietà in sviluppo e varietà in via di riduzione in una situazione di "inizio di decadimento", Osservatorio linguistico della Svizzera italiana, 1999, Locarno, A. Dadò CH (please note that the word 'dialect' does not have any racist meaning in Switzerland and should be rather maeant like in the English way: accordingly, I mean this word in this sense)
  • Petrini, Dario: La koinè ticinese : livellamento dialettale e dinamiche innovative, Ed. Francke, Bern CH 1988
  • Berruto, Gaetano: Lingua, dialetto e situazione sociolinguistica ticinese : atti della tavola rotonda, Castione, 26 CH
As to Insubric, an upper bound can be considered of 350.000 speakers, grosso modo the same number as the inhabitants of Tessin Canton + Val Poschiavo+ Val Bregaglia+ Val Mesolcina in Switzerland. I recall that 'Northen Lombard' Valtellina+Val Poschiavo-GR-CH, which is relatively healthy, is not Insubric, but it consists mainly of western dialects. 'Poschiavino' is very healthy (you can even listen to 3/4 years old children speaking this beautiful variety of Lombard tongue). So in this case the number of Speakers is simply the number of inhabitants of this beautiful valley...:4000.
Again, it looks like tha the proponents of this project need some in-depth examination of the matter, by means of appropriate sociolinguistic tools. They are not realising that they only contribute to the further destruction of both Eastern and Western Lombard.--clamengh 21:01, 2 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The total speakers of Insubric language are about 5 million: that can surprise you, but western Lombardy is a very populated region (especially province of Milan and region of Brianza) and Canton Ticino conserve the original language very much. It's true that the bulk of Insubric speakers currently speak Italian language, too: that because only Italian, here, has an official recognizement by the State. Codice1000 17:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The point is: currently spoken. How many inhabitants of western Lombardy can speak, understand and write insubric and do it in every day life? --Brownout (msg) 02:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How many inhabitants of the world can speak, understand and write Latin, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, and do it in every day life?
Where is the problem if only some hundreds of thousand people can understand and speak a dialect of Insubric Lombard? We have some speakers, we have a recognized way to write it, we have some literature, so why not? If this Wikipedia doesn't find contributors, it will die, OK, but why not to try? Never be afraid of working. --Remulazz 14:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
By sure the number of people able to speak and listen Insubric is equal or greater of the number of people able to comunicate using one of the others idioms existing in Italy which are actually characterized by a specific wikipedia --Bramfab 13:56, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
About speaking and understanding, I confirm the datas said. Regarding orthography, it's unfortunately true that the bulk of the Insubric speakers can't write correctly. But it's also true that the orthographies in use are similar to Italian one, and considering that Insubrics are Italian-alphabetized, it mustn't be difficult to create a Wikipedia with the help of some proofreader like me. Did you never see any mistake in English, French, Italian or Latin Wikipedias? Codice1000 17:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Orobic
Someone consider Insubric and Orobic as an only language, and that because the two languages are both spoken in Lombardy region. Actually, they are not only very different, but also mutually non-intellegible at all. A person of Bergamo (eastern Lombardy) could never speak in his own dialect with a person of Varese (western Lombardy): and that's not for a little contrast of pronunciation, but for a substantial difference in lexicon and grammar. For some aspects, Orobic (east) is similar to Venet: Lombardy has almost never been united in the history: the Adda river was the border between two States: the Milanese one and the Venetian one (that contain also Bergamo, Brescia...). The two languages have also a separate history of literature: the Insubric literature is based on Bosinada, on the Milanese poets of XVIII and XIX centuries, on satyric, Scapigliatura and romanticist arguments... Orobic literature (primarily Bergamasca) never knew this genres. The Orobic theatre is based on Venetian and indigenous characters of Commedia dell'Arte. The Insubric theatre and the dramatic poetry involve Milanese traditional characters as Baltramm de Gaggian, Cecca and literary personages as Giovannin Bongee (invented by Carlo Porta). Codice1000 16:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm writing here a verse of a Bergamasco (Orobic) poem found on Internet. "L'ìa pròpe töt pelàt e 'n sìma a la pèlada a l'ghìa öna bignòca compàgn d'öna patàta! Dopo ü bel dè l'è mòrt, e nòter s-cècc curiùs a m'sè curìcc a èdel slongàt zò 'n mès ai fiùr!". Well, I've asked a translation in Italian, so I can write here the translation in Insubric (Milanese variety): "L'era propri tutt peraa e in scima al melon el gh'aveva on bignon comè on pomm de tera! Poeu on bell dì l'è mort, e nun bagaj curios semm cors a vedell distes giò in mezz ai fior". I swear "col coeur in man" that I've translated the text as correspondently as possible, and that I haven't searched mala fide a particularly difficult text. Actually, I think this text doesn't suggest enough the real difference between the two languages. Codice1000 17:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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