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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Mirandese

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Mirandese Wikipedia

submitted verification final decision
  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.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:
Proposal summary
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Mirandese is a living language spoken by about 15000 persons in the north-eastern region of Portugal and a part of the Leonese region of Spain. As the following mirandese poem tells, Every day there are languages that die and every day there are languages reborn / There are languages that have its writters and there are languages with story tellers / There are languages that are of many people and there are languages that few people speak / But every language is a people's language, they are complex the same way:

Hai lhénguas que to Is dies se muorren i hai lhénguas que to Is dies renácen. Hai lhénguas cun sous scritores i hai lhénguas de cuntadores. Hai lhénguas que son de muitos, i hai lhénguas que poucos úsan. Mas todas eilhas, se son lhénguas de giente, son cumplexas na mesma.

Arguments in favour

    1. A Mirandese general knowledge encyclopedia would be the first of its kind, be it in paper or virtual format. The fact that the language has been mostly spoken and only seldom written throughout its history makes the number of existing records rare and way below what would be expected, even for a language with such a small number of speakers. Wikipedia would be the chance to fill this gap, being available freely to everybody.
    2. Even if after its recognition as an official language in 1999 the number of documents written in Mirandese in established media has increased sharply, the vast majority of them have been literary. Only a small number of people have had the chance to write non-literary text in Mirandese, mostly in local newspapers. Among the few exceptions, there are collections of texts published by students in local schools and the chronicles by Amadeu Ferreira in Público, a national wide newspaper, and in www.diariodetrasosmontes.com. These texts are mostly about language, though, and all of them a strong literary mark and a limited array of themes. A Mirandese Wikipedia would be the chance to diversify the nature of existing texts in Mirandese.
    3. The 450 voluntary students of the language, who learn it in the schools of the Miranda do Douro municipality, have little access to any written texts in Mirandese and, most importantly, to texts where interesting subjects to them are spoken of. Moreover, they lack a medium to easily write and publish content in Mirandese. Their access to knowledge is almost exclusively done in other languages, chiefly Portuguese, hence contributing to their lack of choice in deciding whether to continue of stop using Mirandese, a threatened language accordin wito EU's EBLUL. A Mirandese Wikipedia would provide the means to fulfill both objectives.
    4. As of 2008, every public school in Portugal has free Internet access. A Mirandese Wikipedia would hence be accessible to virtually every student and young native speaker of the language, making it easy to browse and to edit to native speakers.
    5. Current on-line knowledge resources in Mirandese depend on the private initiative of a few individuals. Albeit having been recognized as a constitutional right and a State responsibility in 1999, the development of new resources to enable Mirandese to survive have never been supported by the Government. Albeit not fulfilling the ubiquitous needs of the Mirandese language, a Mirandese Wikipedia could be a platform to quickly build the so much needed knowledge resources and to provide the Mirandese Internet community with a new rendez-vous point.
    6. There is a growing community of bloggers writing in Mirandese, which leaves one hopeful that some people with at least some knowledge of Internet usage would be available to form a Wikipedia administrative team.
    Alcaforro 19:15, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against

  • It's a dialect of asturian-leonese language. They can write in mirandese at Asturian Wikipedia. Asturian-leonese language has 4 dialects: Leonese, Asturian, Cantabrian and Mirandese.--Norrin strange 11:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They have their own ISO code.... and their way of wrinting is very different from asturian. On the other hand, they tried to write in the asturian wikipedia, but they can only translate the articles Miranda and Mirandés, the other articles have to be in normative asturian (suposing mirandese is kind of asturian) (The asturian community portal). Better 13:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Mirandes is much better preserved and less degraded than the asturian and leonese dialects and, in addition, unlike the aforementioned dialects spoken in the Kingdom of Spain, mirandes has an official status of language in the Portuguese republic. Therefore, is worthy having a Wikipedia in Mirandes.
  • Against: Mirandese is the name that recieve the asturian language in Miranda l Douro. It's the same language and only the ortograph changes. All mirandese-speaker can write with the asturian and leonese people at the asturian wikipedia.Yurisov 3:01, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Other discussion

  • Now Mirandese speakers do your job! You are the ones that have to make the mirandese wikipedia reality. Create entries for your collaborative encylopedia.
  • Mirandese has so much of Asturian as it has from Portuguese. Mirandese is a language that born with Asturian and has evolved in the last 800 years with portuguese influence. We cannot say it is an asturian dialect, but only that they have the same roots.
  • I feel alone in this project of a mirandese wikipedia. This proposal hasn't been able to mobilize one mirandese speaker. I can see that just me and a few asturian speakers, to whom I want to thank despite of some of the comments above, have contributed to the test project. I feel a little frustrated for having translated almost all most-used-messages of the meta-wiki for mwl, and I hope this may be usefull in a future similar proposal. For now, we, mirandese people, are nor ready for a mirandese wikipedia. I cannot contribute anymore for the test project. Sorry. MCruz 13:02, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It is sad that you find that there is not enough interest in the Mirandese language.. We are thankful for your contributions particularly for the localisation part of it. This proposal will wait for a renewed interest and so will the content in the Incubator and Betawiki.. Thanks for your hard work.. GerardM 18:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are renewed interest in the language, or even better, mirandese people were not really aware of this project. Unfortunately there are not much mirandese speakers but i called some to help. :-) The most used messages have been retranslated and the number of articles is growing. Regards and "Bamos alhá, hai qu'atacar". --Cecílio 15:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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