Many of us turn to Wikipedia when learning about something new.

And most major languages have their own Wikipedia. But wikis also come in a few unexpected flavours, including Latin, Old English, and even a few constructed languages.

Linguist Daniel Midgley volunteers the information on this episode of Talk the Talk.


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102: Non-English Wikipedias

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It all started when my friend Ash showed me the Anglish Moot, which is the Wiki for the constructed language Anglish. I thought it was fascinating. I’ve sometimes wondered what English would be like if we only had Germanic words, and here someone’s gone and answered our question. How about that.

From there, I got interested in other non-English Wiki(pedia)s, so I decided to make this episode about other ones out there, including Simple English, Old English, Tok Pisin, Pig Latin, and Klingon. Yes, that’s right: Pig Latin.


Show notes

There are lots of Wikipedias out there.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

All the text and HTML takes about 7.9 GB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Size_of_Wikipedia#size_in_GB

Latin Wikipedia
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_prima

Latin Wikipedians tell all
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_Latin_Wikipedia

There’s also Tok Pisin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin

This is the Tok Pisin Wikipedia page for Linguistics.
http://tpi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingwistiks

About Lojban
http://jbo.wikipedia.org/wiki/lojban.

The Lojban Wikipedia is completely beyond me.
http://jbo.wikipedia.org/wiki/ralju_ckupau

The Pig Latin Wikipedia never really got off the ground.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Pig_Latin

But there is an unofficial one on Wikia. I hit the Andomray Agepay, which gave me the page for the Unitedway Atesstay.
http://cyclopedianay.wikia.com/wiki/Unitedway_Atesstay

And Klingon
http://klingon.wikia.com/wiki/ghItlh%27a%27

Old English Wiki
http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C4%93afods%C4%ABde

About Anglish
http://suite101.com/article/anglish-a410810

The page for ‘science’, or in Anglish, ‘lore’
http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Lore

List of lores
http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Lores

Here’s the Simple English Wikipedia page, explaining the Theory of Relativity.
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity