The Latin Wikipedia () is the
Latin language
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
edition of
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
, created in May 2002. As of , it has articles. While all primary content is in Latin, modern languages such as
English,
Italian,
French,
German or
Spanish are often used in discussions, since many
users find this easier.
Professional Latinists have observed a gradual improvement in the encyclopedia. According to Robert Gurval, chairman of the
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
classics department, "the articles that are good are in fact very good," though some contributors do not write the language perfectly.
The Latin Wikipedia was the first edition of Wikipedia written in a
defunct language; others such as the
Old Church Slavonic Wikipedia came later.
Modern vocabulary and coining policies
When the Latin Wikipedia began, the predominant topics were those having to do with classical history, but beginning in 2006, a group of new contributors greatly expanded the coverage of 20th-century topics, such as
pop culture
Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, some ...
and
technology
Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...
.
The official policy of Vicipaedia is that neologisms and user coinings are not allowed ("Noli fingere!" Latin for "Don't coin/make up things"). In order to deal with concepts that did not exist in
Classical or
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...
, terms from modern Latin sources are used, such as
botanical Latin,
scientific Latin, 18th- and 19th-century Latin language encyclopedias and books, the official
Vatican
Vatican may refer to:
Geography
* Vatican City, an independent city-state surrounded by Rome, Italy
* Vatican Hill, in Rome, namesake of Vatican City
* Ager Vaticanus, an alluvial plain in Rome
* Vatican, an unincorporated community in the ...
dictionary of modern Latin, as well as current Latin newspapers and radio shows, such as ''Ephemeris'' and Radio Bremen.
As in any language with a broad international character, often more than one correct term exists for a given concept (just as in English a
certain car part is called a "bonnet" by British speakers but a "hood" by Americans). In Latin the existence of multiple synonyms is even more prevalent since the language has been in continuous use over a wide geographical area for over 2000 years. Sometimes the same concept is represented by different terms in classical, medieval, scientific and modern Latin. In general Vicipaedia adopts the oldest or classical term for the page name, with redirects from any others; major alternatives are listed in the article with footnote references. There is often lively debate among editors about shades of meaning. The practice of avoiding invented words and giving references for alternative terms agrees well with the general Wikipedia insistence on verifiability and the rule against original research.
Many universities and other institutions have official Latin names. In fields where Latin is the current standard language, Vicipaedia normally adopts official names as pagenames, even if they belong to scientific or technical, rather than to classical Latin. This applies to:
* names of Catholic dioceses
* Catholic official titles
* biological species and other taxa
* planets, asteroids, satellites, and constellations
* topographical features on extraterrestrial bodies
* anatomical names
* names of diseases
When occasionally a term for a modern concept cannot be found, the customary practice is to do exactly what most other languages do: to borrow an international word (often from a
Romance language
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
or English). Such direct borrowing was done for the particle names
photon
A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can ...
(), and
gluon
A gluon ( ) is a type of Massless particle, massless elementary particle that mediates the strong interaction between quarks, acting as the exchange particle for the interaction. Gluons are massless vector bosons, thereby having a Spin (physi ...
() and for the unit of temperature
Kelvin
The kelvin (symbol: K) is the base unit for temperature in the International System of Units (SI). The Kelvin scale is an absolute temperature scale that starts at the lowest possible temperature (absolute zero), taken to be 0 K. By de ...
(). The word is given a Latin morphology if this can be done easily, or, if not, used unchanged in its foreign form; but many international words already have a Latin or Graeco-Latin appearance, because Greek and Latin have always served as sources of new scientific terminology.
Orthography
Latin Wikipedia made it policy for all to follow the more widespread contemporary late 20th century orthographical habit of distinguishing u (pronounced as
from v (pronounced as
in
Classical Latin
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...
and as
in
Ecclesiastical Latin
Ecclesiastical Latin, also called Church Latin or Liturgical Latin, is a form of Latin developed to discuss Christian theology, Christian thought in Late antiquity and used in Christianity, Christian liturgy, theology, and church administration ...
) but not i (pronounced as
from j (pronounced as
in both Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin). This orthographical practice was not without detractors, who claimed that it is a copy of the Italian spelling reform in which the i/j distinction is lost but the u/v distinction is maintained.
The Latin
Wikipedia logo reads "VICIPÆDIA", displaying the "
Æ". However, in accordance with contemporary practice, Vicipaedia does not use
ligatures in its articles for the diphthongs written ''ae'' ("
Æ", "æ") and ''oe'' ("
Œ", "œ"), even though in Latin a diphthong like the ''ae'' in ''aes'' is pronounced differently from an hiatus like the ''ae'' in ''aer'', both in the classical and even more so in the Italianate pronunciation. The ligatures were adopted by the
Romans to save space, and æ and œ in particular were later maintained by Latin typographers to distinguish the diphthong from the hiatus. Latin Wikipedia has chosen another convention, namely to write hiatus with the diaeresis: ''aë'', ''oë''. If Latin Wikipedia users prefer, however, they can activate a gadget under user preferences that automatically displays ''ae'' and ''oe'' without the diaeresis as ligatures on the pages.
Latin Wikipedia, in common with the majority of modern printed Latin, does not require the marking of long vowels in words (in Latin textbooks this is usually done by adding a macron over a character, as for example, the e in ''stēlla''.) Thus, both terr''a'' and terr''ā'' are written simply as ''terra'', although the former is in the
nominative case
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...
, while the latter in the
ablative. The context usually makes clear which one is being used, though the use of macron or apex is allowed when the distinction is necessary.
Gallery
Vicipaedia logo 2013.png, Latin Wikipedia's 100,000 article logo (18 December 2013)
See also
*
List of Wikipedias
Wikipedia is a free content, free multilingualism, multilingual open source, open-source wiki-based online encyclopedia open collaboration, edited and maintained by a Wikipedia community, community of volunteer editors, started on 15 January 2001 ...
References
External links
*
The Latin Wikipedia
*
Latin Wikipedia mobile version* Anne Mahoney,
Vicipaedia Latina: Encyclopedia and Community at ''DCC:
Dickinson College Commentaries''. Also published in ''Classical Outlook'' vol. 90 no. 3 (Spring 2015) pp. 68–90
{{Authority control
Wikipedias in Romance languages
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
Internet properties established in 2002
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...