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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Nias

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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.

A committee member provided the following comment:

Project is eligible, but we would like to see a little more content creation here. Please contribute to the test project. For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 16:28, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Approved on 2020-12-17. --MF-W 18:20, 17 December 2020 (UTC) phabricator:T270408[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 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:
 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)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL nia.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Wikipedia "Wikipedia" in your language
Project namespace Wikipedia usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace Huhuo Wikipedia "Wikipedia 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:Wikipedia-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

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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.

Supporters

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  • Nias language is one of the most unique language in the world which every word in Nias Language is ending with a vowel. As a local language in Indonesia, Nias Language is also going to be extinct. So why, I make this proposal to make a new Wikipedia in Nias language. Give me a chance to prove it my word.

I will commit to take care of Wikipedia Li Niha --SoegandaGoeleo (talk) 07:33, 19 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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Please continue to work on the test project at incubator:Wp/nia. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References

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  1. ↑ Badan Pusat Statistik Kota Gunungsitoli, Jumlah Penduduk dan Rumah Tangga Menurut Kabupaten/Kota di Propinsi Sumatera Utara Tahun 2016-2019.
  2. ↑ niasonline.net, Li Niha – the Essence of the Culture, Tradition and History of the Nias People

Settings

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User:Yasanto Lase, User:Banio ba Hinako, User:Agusti lase, User:Pinerineks, 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, …)?

Since this is the first project in Nias language, we also need the translations of all namespace names: 

 Media: Media
 Special: Si tohude
 Talk: Huhuo
 User: Sangoguna
 User_talk: Huhuo_zangoguna
 $1_talk [= Project talk, e.g. Wikipedia talk]: Huhuo_$1
 File: Berkas
 File_talk: Huhuo_berkas
 MediaWiki
 MediaWiki_talk: Huhuo_MediaWiki
 Template: Templat
 Template_talk: Huhuo_templat
 Help: Fanolo
 Help_talk: Huhuo_wanolo
 Category: Kategori
 Category_talk: Huhuo_kategori

--MF-W 16:01, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

MF-W, hopefully my translation is sufficient. banio (talk) 06:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. --MF-W 18:20, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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