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Petition in favour of a Classical Greek Wikipedia (see the official discussion page)

To the Language Committee of Wikipedia

 

Summary

Ancient Greek is the key to an extraordinary literary heritage. It stands as a classical language, setting itself apart from other ancient languages such as Etruscan, Phoenician, etc. There are no substantial reasons to reject the creation of new Wikipedia projects in Greek or other classical languages; on the contrary, there are compelling reasons in favour. We exhort the Wikipedia Language Committee to introduce a distinction between ancient and classical languages within its Language Policy and to lift the ban on new projects in classical languages. In particular, we support the approval of the Classical Greek version of Wikipedia.

 

Foreword about the Classical Greek Literature

If Greece is the birthplace of Western civilization, Classical Greek is its native language. It is difficult to overstate the significance of this tongue. 1 in 19 English words has its origins in Classical Greek (this statistic is based on the ca. 80,000 words in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary), and this is true also for most other languages of the world. E.g., school, idea, history, democracy, economy, problem, organize, machine, mathematics and music are Greek words.

Ancient Greek culture has been a spring of artistic and philosophical inspiration for more than two millennia, both in the scientific and in the humanistic field. Greek mythology has been a fantastic resource for understanding and exploring the human being. The Homeric poems constitute the most ancient and two of the most impressive pieces of European literature. The oldest comedies, tragedies and works of philosophical research were composed in Classical Greek (by authors like Euripides, Aristophanes and Plato). The political freedom, the liberty of speech and the development of philosophy and logics were strictly connected. The first historiographers (Herodotus and Thucydides) were also Greek: American founding fathers (see Thomas Jefferson, Writings, New York, The Library of America, 1984, p. 816) encouraged their sons to study these texts (as well as Greek poetry) directly in their original language. Those who have known these authors are aware that their ancient words are at the same time fresh, profound, and alive. It is necessary to make an effort to approach the Greeks and their ancient language, to be able to read them again; nevertheless, those who do so discover an extraordinarily meaningful and youthful message.

The accomplishments of the ancient Greek scientists (e.g., Euclid and Archimedes) are perhaps even more astounding. The Chinese in the 1600s discovered that the Earth is round (or a “spheroid”, σφαιροιδής, in Strabo, Geographia, II, V, 5, who relates Hellenistic scientists’ theories) because a Jesuit missionary (as all Westerners) had learned that from ancient Greek texts. Isaac Newton learned that the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from ancient Pythagorean mathematicians, as he himself declares (“[Pythagoras] proportionem vero his experimentis inventam, teste Macrobio, applicuit ad caelos. […] intellexit per harmoniam caelestem quod pondera planetarum in solem essent reciproce ut quadrata distantiarum eorum a sole.” Newton, The Classical Scholia, p. 32). Charles Darwin was inspired in formulating his theory of the evolution of the species by these famous words by Empedocles: “When the whole combines harmoniously, as if to respond to some ends, it survives, by chance having been combined in a suitable way; to the extent that this is not the case, however, it dissolves, today as in the past.” (in Aristotle, Physica, II, 8). The principle by which a scientific theory should “adapt to observable phenomena” (in Classical Greek, φενόμενα σῴζειν, lit. “to save the phenomena”, in the words of Aristarchus, father of heliocentrism) was also formulated by Greek scientists. The first extant work of non-Euclidean geometry is the Sphaerica by 2nd century BC mathematician Theodosius of Bithynia. According to a small survey by Mike Kinde, a modern English medical article is usually made up for almost 10% by words derived from Classical Greek. The scientific theory of propositional calculus, first developed by Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, was recovered only in the late 1800s. Windmills, watermills, and even the first concept of a steam engine were first devised by ancient Greek engineers (a treatise survives by Hero of Alexandria). Many conceptions by Freud (among which the Oedipus’ complex) have their origins in The Interpretation of Dreams by Artemidorus of Daldis. And so on (this paragraph is based on the treatise by science historian Lucio Russo titled The Forgotten Revolution).

On the other hand, Classical Greek is also the original language of the Gospels. This old and venerable language is still nowadays the liturgical language of the Greek-Orthodox church. The Greek-Orthodox Church also employs a “puristic” (Καθαρεύουσα) version of Modern Greek (where “pure” = classical) in official documents and communications.

This is to say that Classical Greek is a value in itself, as a key to access an invaluable literature.

 

Classical Languages as a Category Distinct from Ancient, Historical, and Extinct Tongues

A classical language is a language endowed with prestige within a given culture, serving as a carrier of literature that is considered classical: ancient, foundational, worthy of being taught and imitated. Even after their disappearance as vernacular languages, classical languages continue to be studied and used for cultural and linguistic-inquiry purposes due to their matrix quality. Typically for hundreds or thousands of years, classical languages serve as vehicular languages: for instance, less than 0.01% of the Latin corpus has been produced by native speakers (J. Leonhardt, Latin: Story of a World Language, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2013, p. 2). The proportions for Sanskrit and Classical Greek are comparable. Classical languages are used nearly exclusively by generations of second-language speakers as auxiliary, domain-specific or vehicular languages.

Ancient Greek is a classical language of extraordinary richness and grammatical sophistication which never actually dies, constantly inspires new minds, and is regularly used to create new words. The name of Wikipedia itself is half-Greek (ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, encyclo-pedia is an ancient Greek phrase and ideal, meaning “all-round education”). Aristotle was the first to organize knowledge in encyclopaedic form. One of the oldest surviving encyclopaedic lexica (the Suda) was also compiled in Classical Greek. Also, some of the first university-like institutions (the Academia of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens, the Museum of Alexandria and its Great Library, the Pandidacterium of Constantinople) were born in the ancient Greek world.

These considerations should advise to promote a version of Wikipedia in Classical Greek, rather than hamper it.

 

Refutation of Arguments Against a Wikipedia in Classical Greek

It is also not true that there wouldn’t be a large-enough base of users to make the project sustainable. In this very moment, there is around one million people in the world (approx. 0.5 million in Greece and 0.27 million in Italy alone) who study Classical Greek. Production of texts in Classical Greek has never ceased completely. Classical Greek is still nowadays a vehicular language for classicists, biblists, Greek-Orthodox clerics and even Hellenist groups. The language is no longer vernacular but is still widely read, written and occasionally spoken. Even a contemporary novel such as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has an edition in Classical Greek. In 1994, Jan Křesadlo composed Astronautilia, a science fiction epic poem, in Homeric Greek. An online newspaper in Classical Greek called Akropolis has existed for more than twenty years.

The absence of native speakers should not be considered a decisive argument against the use of Classical Greek in Wikipedia. Latin in the Renaissance had no native speakers but it was nevertheless the language of science. The European Union, India, and many other nations use English as an official language, even if almost nobody there speaks English as a native language. Excluding these countries from accessing or contributing to the English Wikipedia based on lack of native English speakers would be nonsense.
Nor does the absence of native speakers inhibit good writing and quality control. This may be an insurmountable problem for many ancient languages, but it is not for classical languages: these have been “undead languages” for millennia, and have evolved teaching methods to mitigate the lack of feedback by native speakers: for instance, lots of reading, focus on word usage and style in textual analysis and explanatory commentaries, imitation of the style of particular authors, collections of idiomatic expressions, discussions about how certain idioms functioned, etc.

Having Wikipedia projects in classical languages would widen the availability of information, given that contents would be created and read by groups with different first tongues, and that classical languages are repositories of much untranslated material, which allows their readers additional insights into certain subjects. One of the many useful applications of this Wikipedia is to gather passages from the ancient Greek corpus, organizing them by themes (example) rather than by authors (unlike Wikisource). Furthermore, it hosts unique contents regarding the ancient phase, the etymologies and the ancient names of places and things, coagulating cultural interests that other versions of Wikipedia usually underestimate or neglect. Although the growth of the Classical Greek Wikipedia has been severely pre-empted by the scepticism and temporary refusal by Wikipedia’s responsible people to approve it (while a Latin, a Sanskrit and even a Pali, an Old English, a Gothic, and an Old Slavonic version of Wikipedia exist), its “incubator” counts already 2,000 articles, some of which contain information which is not available in any other version of Wikipedia, and sometimes anywhere on the Internet (for example, the not-yet-complete series of articles about the ancient Greek poleis, which is the only place online where you can find concise and systematic information about the politic evolution of each ancient Greek city-state, about metropolis-colony relationships, patron deities, coinage of bronze, silver and gold coins, or even about victories in the Panhellenic games, etc.).

Classical Greek is a very rich language: the Montanari Greek-Italian vocabulary contains 140,000 entries. Also, the rendition of modern concepts would not be a problem, because many of these terms have been actually created in Classical Greek (in this sense, Classical Greek is more vital than many modern languages). Furthermore, Modern Greek, which is profoundly different from Classical Greek in many aspects of phonology, syntax and morphology, is actually very similar in new word formation, and there exists an archaizing variant of Modern Greek (called “Katharevousa”) whose vocabulary is for the most part compatible with Classical Greek.

The ISO-639-3 language code for “Ancient Greek (to 1453)” covers the whole period from Homer to Gemistos Plethon. Innumerable neologisms were introduced in Classical Greek during these 2.200 years. The fact that after that time the language evolved into another language (Modern Greek) does not prevent those who know and use Classical Greek as a second language to create neologisms (like it didn’t prevent, e.g., people of the Renaissance to create new Latin words). This does not go against the nature of Classical Greek, as it simply demonstrates how the language functions. The creation of neologisms alone doesn’t fundamentally alter the language, as English did not cease to be English as a result of the creation of the word “computer”. This doesn’t contradict educational purposes too: to say the contrary is like saying that studying a modern language (including neologisms such as airplane, television and computer) prevents the understanding of older literature in the same language. On the contrary, learning a language is the basis to learn its literature (both new and old).

Also, maintenance costs should not pose a problem: a Classical Greek Wikipedia would not be massive, and the data could easily be stored within the existing infrastructure of Wikipedia. Furthermore, the signatories of this petition believe that Wikipedia is a valuable project for disseminating knowledge and raising awareness worldwide. Many of us would like to support Wikipedia, but are held back by its seemingly inexplicable aversion against Classical Greek. In all seriousness, we cannot fathom a plausible, honest reason why a Kotava Wikipedia (Kotava is a constructed language understood by around 40 people worldwide) was approved while a Classical Greek version was not.

We hope that this deplorable state of affairs will be rectified as quickly as possible, rather than dragging on indefinitely. We suggest that the Language Committee enhance the richness and value of Wikipedia by recognizing the possibility for classical languages such as Ancient Greek and Latin to develop their own projects.