ウィキメディア言語の多様性

Wikimedia Indigenous Languages (WIL) is the coordinating body for the promotion and development of indigenous languages on Wikimedia projects.

ウィキメディア現地語

A project to support smaller, less empowered,
language communities to have access
to their at-risk knowledge

ショートカット：
WIL

キー・リソース

Mailing list (click to subscribe): languages@lists.wikimedia.org
IRC チャンネル:‬ #wikilang^接続

使命

Wikimedia Indigenous Languages' vision is to see the sum of the knowledge available to everybody in their own languages and to share the knowledge of those languages themselves. It will achieve that by:

reaching out to indigenous language speakers with the goal of developing Wikimedia projects in their languages
establishing working cooperation with like-minded projects and organizations involved in the promotion, revitalization and/or recording of indigenous languages
sharing experiences and providing feedback to one another with a view to inspiring and enriching each others' events and programs
creating and expanding Wikimedia projects in all indigenous languages
supporting Wikilang as a project to document all languages
acting together to voice common concerns and interests inside the Wikimedia movement
a strong commitment to the advancement of minority languages and diversity within Wikimedia

定義

For the purpose of this project, an "indigenous language" is a language that is native, or aboriginal to a region and spoken by indigenous people, but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. In some instances, this may include an island of speakers removed from their language communities by trauma and diaspora. Synonyms are "small languages", "endangered languages", "lesser-used languages", "minority languages", and "autochthonous languages"; some regions also use "aboriginal languages". Wikimedia Indigenous Languages focuses on languages and language communities facing the challenges and hurdles inherent to minority languages, related to corpus development, technical resources, sociolinguistic status, and/or lack of official recognition.

The status of these languages and language communities in Wikimedia may vary greatly from one case to the other, ranging from the most under-represented to those more developed and ranking on the middle-upper end of Wikimedia projects overall. All share a feeling of treading common ground from their lesser-used status, aspiring to both make universal knowledge available to everyone and local knowledge become universal, in close connection with each language's community.

なぜ重要なのか

Languages are the pillars of cultures and the vehicles of oral traditions. They are an essential part of people's identities and an important heritage to preserve. Each language is a unique way of thinking and structuring a view of the world. Each loss of a language represents the loss of centuries-old knowledge, heritage, and history for ever. Cultures are greatly weakened by the loss of their languages and often vanish with it or soon after.

According to UNESCO, 43% of the languages spoken in the world today are vulnerable or in danger of extinction. A language becomes vulnerable when its youth no longer learns it.

戦略

The role of Wikimedia Indigenous Languages is to support and encourage efforts to develop specific Wikimedia projects in small and endangered languages. It will serve as an international body to collect and share best practices, lessons learned, and methodology for developing small-languages Wikimedia projects and preserving endangered languages. It will offer support to people interested in developing initiatives and new projects. It will become the point of contact to set up cooperation with other organizations working towards the same goals, and it will actively seek such cooperation opportunities.

Operation

Many lesser-used languages operate at a regional level, often relying on a lingua franca for communication and a referential larger culture; it is the aim of this resource to establish common bonds, as well as cooperation, beyond these areas. Becoming a meeting point opens the opportunity to provide and receive assistance and feedback to learn from each other's experiences with events, programmes and/or helpful technical inventions, and to use information as a way to showcase one's own initiatives. The main language of communication is English, but any other languages are welcome; the goal is to make news and messages as communicative and far-reaching as possible.