User talk:Cgboeree

Lingua Franca Nova

Hello, thanks Cgboeree. Every statement in a Wikipedia article ought to have references to reputable, reliable secondary sources--newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, major news blogs, and sites like Ethnologue or Encyclopedia Britannica or references in published books... could you please add such references to the article? I apologize as it seems your constructed language has many more supporters than many of the others on here, but we're requesting this of all of them, not just yours. Kraŭs (talk) 21:54, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello Kraus. Please note that there are the kinds of references you ask for. This is an issue that has been resolved. Thanks. Cgboeree (talk) 22:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

List of constructed languages

Dear George/Mr. Boeree (whatever you prefer),

First of all, I can understand your point. Frankly, this is the kind of trouble you'll always get when you start subdividing stuff into "major" and "minor" without specifying criteria. The same thing happens all the time on Template:Constructed languages. Because how, for example, can "significant followings" be quantified? The only languages with really significant followings (say, more than 100,000 users) are Esperanto and Volapük. Interlingua comes third with over 1,000 users or something. I have no idea how many people have been actively using languages like Ido, Novial or Occidental in the past, but I am pretty sure it can't be much more than a few hundred. On the other hand, if we look at the "minor" section, then it is obvious that none of these languages, with the exception of your own LFN, Slovianski and (possibly) Neo, have ever had any following at all.

On the other hand, what makes a project "significant in the history of auxiliary languages"? This one is even harder to put your finger on. For most of the languages mentioned goes that their names keep recurring in books about constructed languages, but usually without revealing much other information than the name of their authors, their year of publication and perhaps a sample. All in all, there are hundreds of those, and in most cases, their impact is close to zero.

So if you ask me what should distinguish "major" from "minor", it is this: minor are those languages that are or are not significant enough to warrant a separate Wikipedia article by meeting the notability and verifiability criteria (in terms of publications etc.), but apart from that have neither had more than a handful of users, nor played a role in the history of constructed languages that is arguably more substantial than the rest.

It was not me who ranged Slovianski among the major languages, but the person who did actually had a point: of course it is not at the same level of importance as Esperanto, but it does indeed have hundreds of users - being an insider I can testify that. This clearly distinguishes it from the rest of the "minor" section. In fact, if you combine the number of Slovianski users with users of other Interslavic projects (notably Novosloviensky), I'm pretty sure Interslavic as a whole outnumbers Ido and perhaps even Interlingua.

By the way, I am not very happy with the present Slovianski page, because it focuses very much on the Slovianski project itself and very little on its historical context. The truth is that the concept of a language understandable to all Slavs ("Interslavic" or "Panslavic") goes back many centuries. I have done extensive research into many projects from the 17th century onwards, and one thing that immediately becomes apparent is that the majority of them are practically identical - or at least, more similar to each other than Ido is to Esperanto, or various dialects of a natural language are to each other. That's why Slovianski cannot be considered a separate language at all, it is merely an iteration of Interslavic. If you compare it to another recent iteration, Novosloviensky (Neoslavonic), you will surely find some grammatical differences, but also a common dictionary plus the fact that most authors/users mix elements of both projects rather than strictly adhering to one. I think that's just the nature of the beast: among hundreds or thousands of users over the centuries, you won't find two people who write exactly the same way, but they still write in such way that the results are mutually understandable for 99% or so. Despite many efforts, Interslavic does not really have a fixed grammar, but rather moves around freely within certain margins.

For some reason, zonal languages like Interslavic often fly under the radar. Books and other publications about IALs mention them only in passing or not at all. Look at international auxiliary language: there's not a word about them! My best guess is that this is because most of the writing about the subject is done by esperantists, who tend to focus on global languages only. Zonal languages are so substantially different from the latter that comparing them is futile. In the case of Interslavic it has not even been established yet if it should be considered a constructed language at all. In general, I try to keep a safe distance from stuff I'm involved in myself (to avoid being accused about conflicts of interest), but on the other hand, since I am one of the caretakers of the constructed languages section as a whole, and I happen know a lot about Interslavic, perhaps I should just be bold and rework the article about it.

Returning to the subject of our "dispute", I think both LFN and Slovianski/Interslavic should be moved to the "major" part for the reasons I mentioned above. I don't know how many users LFN has, but I guess there must be quite a few. And Slovianski in any case is the first Interslavic project to gain broad media attention and a large user community (and this in spite of the fact that building a community has never even been a purpose at all). For the rest, I'm not sure whether Universalglot really belongs in the "major" category; that it is "arguably the first naturalistic international auxiliary language" is pure nonsense, if you consider that Juraj Križanić published the first Interslavic grammar as early as 1661. To be honest, I'm not quite sure about Glosa either.

What do you think?

Best regards, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 01:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

• Hi, Jan. I prefer George. I didn't intend to bring up any sore points. It just seemed obvious that Slovianski didn't belong with the historically significant others. It seemed to me that the list of "major" IALs refered to the ones that people talk about most when they discuss the history of IALs. Of course I would love to put LFN up there - and any other IAL with a speaking population. But my suggestion would simplify things quite a bit: Divide the list by date instead of importance. Perhaps "pre-1800", "1800 - 1849", "1850 - 1899", etc. What do you think? At least it would make the list easier to absorb. One more thing: The list under the IAL list is just a mix of things. Perhaps it should be removed and a couple of the items moved to the list page. What do you think? Cgboeree (talk) 12:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

• Hi, again, Jan. I got bold and went ahead and tried my idea on the two pages. I updated them as well. Please give me your opinion! Best wishes, Cgboeree (talk) 20:10, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi, George, sorry for not responding earlier, life has been busy lately. In short: I think it's better this way and thank you for taking the same of doing it. The only thing I am not entirely sure about, is whether it really adds much to add period headers at all. After all, now that the list is chronological, I think any further subdivision is needless. But that's just my opinion, of course! Best, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 21:58, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

See my reply on my own talk page. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 15:18, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

LFN: two questions

Hi George. Actually, I have two questions about LFN, I suppose this is a moment as good as any to ask them.

First of all, what is its primary purpose? To serve as a global auxiliary language (like Esperanto), or rather to serve as a zonal constructed language for Romance speakers? The input languages mentioned in the article would suggest the latter, but would you agree with that? And if not, what is the idea behind Catalan as an input language, and how is this input realised? Let me tell you why I am asking this. In the case of zonal Slavic, Germanic or other projects it is quite obvious what they were made for. But in the case of Romance the situation is more complicated. Languages like Interlingua and Latino Sine Flexione are quite explicitly intended to serve as languages for global use, while some other projects (Latino Moderne, Romanica, Romanova, Romanid) call themselves "Pan-Romance" - notwithstanding the fact that they are equally based on Latin/Romance, and the fact that most projects of the second group are practically identical to (or even based on) Interlingua. Where would you place LFN in this?

A second thing that intrigates me is the sentence: LFN can be written with either the Latin or Cyrillic script. This strikes me as odd, because let's face it, LFN can also be written in Devanagari, Ge'ez or Tengwar. The real question is: is this Cyrillic orthography actually being used by anybody, and if so, for what purpose? And what is the idea behind this? Because quite frankly, the choice for Cyrillic seems a bit surprising both for a global and a Pan-Romance language. Best regards, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 19:47, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Jan. The purpose of LFN is to serve as a global auxiliary language. I decided to use the modern romance languages because they are, in fact, quite widespread and have many speakers, both first-language and second-language. The idea of using other languages besides these doesn't really make sense, as Gode rightfully pointed out, and although an a priori language is certainly "neutral", it actually doesn't help anyone either. The romance languages still have a nice connection to international scientific language, and to english (the de facto "lingua franca", at least for now). Using latin didn't make sense to me, since it is basically dead, and I didn't use English as a contributing language because it generates a lot of resistance due to its dominance right now and its association with certain ideologies. I don't think "zonal" languages make much sense (if you will pardon me!). Of course, we knew that LFN is not likely to be adopted (no IAL is), but we knew that we had to take the idea seriously if we were to create a real "contender". We also pay a lot of attention to esthetics, something that gets overlooked a lot (especially in esperanto which, frankly, is ugly in speech and writing, IMHO).

From the beginning, we had eastern European members, and we thought it proper to create a specific cyrillic transcription, inasmuch as that is the second-most common alphabet. It is a simple letter-for-letter arrangement, and has received some praise, but you are right that it hasn't been used much. It could be dropped, I suppose, but I don't know why it should be. Best wishes, Cgboeree (talk) 20:03, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! Well, of course I agree with you on most accounts - except for the obvious fact that I disagree with you about zonal languages. I also very much agree with you about the importance of esthetics, which is precisely why I dislike Esperanto, Ido and Novial: I find them ugly to the point that they hurt the eye. I do like Interlingua, though. As for Cyrillics, well, in my humble opinion it seems kind of contrary to the purpose of an IAL, because it immediately raises the question: if Cyrillic is official, then why not Devanagari, Chinese and/or Arabic script? If you ask me, the most natural solution would be: one official orthography, while other orthographies can be treated as pronunciation guides, or just as a playful element. Not that it disturbs me though, I was just being curious. Thank you for answering! Best, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 21:32, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

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Jurors and promotion for the upcoming wiki science competition

Hi. I can see from the information on your profile that you work in the academia. Actually, I wish I has seen this profile before.

Have you seen any of my message here or on commons or wikiversity about the upcoming WSC 2017?

I am looking for active wikimedians with academic background and some bibliometric record (so I can prepare or use their wikidata items) to work as jurors. Originally I looked for people from countries without a national jury but now I am just making a last search.

I don't know what's the status of the USA committee and its selection procedure, so you can contact them as well if you are interested. I am sorry that we basically completed the final jury and if you are interested to join at that level, I can only offer you a place in the second-level jury. Would you be interested in any case?

The jurors are not supposed to be all wikimedians, but we wish to promote the use of the images on the platforms and show that there is a continuum between the wiki-world and the academia. At the same time, I want all the jurors to show they are involved in the peer-reviewed process, so the uploaders can see they are students and researchers like them.

Let me know. The event starts on 01/11/2017 or maybe two weeks later. the work of the jurors starts a month later in any case, when the competition is closed. We can define the last details of the jury during the month of November, but we'd like to be almost ready in two weeks, in order to provide the challengers with a rough idea of the composition of the juries.

In any case, we can contact you next time if you are still interested but you can't join this time.

Also if you can spread the news around in your working environment, that would be great!

Regards.--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:55, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

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