2025:Program/A Possible Way Forward: Saving Endangered Languages Through Wikipedia

Session title: A Possible Way Forward: Saving Endangered Languages Through Wikipedia

Session type: Lightning talk

Track: Pre-Conference event: WikiTongues

Language: en

Endangered languages with written texts in modern societies often struggle with a lack of reading, writing, and communication materials, making it difficult for speakers to use them in daily life. The Taiwanese Aboriginal Language Wikipedia Project was created to address this issue by providing a digital space for indigenous languages to grow and develop. Wikipedia, as an open and collaborative platform, serves as a valuable tool for language preservation and revitalization. After years of dedicated efforts, five Taiwanese Aboriginal languages—Amis, Sakizaya, Paiwan, Tayal, and Seediq —now have their own Wikipedia editions. This session will explore the journey of these Wikipedias, from their initial incubation phase to official approval. It will highlight the challenges faced, the strategies used to overcome obstacles, and the broader impact of such projects in strengthening endangered languages, promoting cultural identity, and ensuring linguistic diversity in the digital age.

Description

Apart from mother language families, aboriginal languages are most often used in media programmes, especially in the news in Taiwan. News programmes are confronted with new things every day, which are not easy to express in Mandarin Chinese, so how can they be expressed in aboriginal languages? In fact, the former (languages used at home) is the language of daily life, with less vocabulary and fewer sentence patterns, while the latter (news report) is a formal expression of complex intellectual meanings, with a large vocabulary and sentence patterns, especially with a large number of newly coined words, and there are not a few sentence patterns that need to be refined in order to express different nuances of meanings.

Aren’t aboriginal languages what the aborigines speaks every day? Actually, no. In the past, the language of everyday life was the language of conversation in the private sphere of the family in the past, whereas the aboriginal language or native language that is being promoted nowadays is the language of narration used in formal occasions in the school and society in the modern living environment. In other words, the language itself has to be reformed and strengthened, and if it fails to pass the test, it has to shrink.

The effective ways of hammering the language, creation and translation, are a seemingly contradictory but complementary pair of tools. The process of modernization within European languages, in the face of the modernization of powerful languages, can be used to prove that, furthermore, translation is the mainstay, and then creation, refined in the process of translation, is the authentic one. The new literatures of Asian nations, with no exceptions, have all been through the process of language translation and creation, absorbing new ideas and transforming old societies at the same time. With this in mind, the operation of a Wikipedia is a low-cost, high-impact opportunity that should not be missed.

There are two types of encyclopedias: closed and free. Authentic encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, are of the closed type, which are written by scholars and experts with great care and attention, thus ensuring the academic standard of the discussions, and readers can cite them with out worrying about misinformation. As for the Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia, which is open to anyone to edit at any time. More positively, Wikipedia has the function of linking articles between language versions, so that the same term, such as “Indigenous peoples“ or “Taiwan”, can be switched between different languages, so that we can feel how each language is perceived or how fast it is being updated, and thus try to figure out the way to deal with one's own language. For the disadvantaged languages, especially the endangered ones, Wikipedia serves not only to provide knowledge, but also to practice writing, especially with the very few Wikipedians, to revise each other's articles or to expand their vocabulary.

How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?

Inclusivity The project sheds light on the evolving nature of Indigenous languages, moving from informal daily speech within families to formalized public discourse. Wikipedia, as a multilingual and open-access platform, provides a rare and inclusive space where speakers of marginalized or endangered languages can develop formal written registers. This inclusive environment encourages Indigenous communities not only to participate in knowledge-sharing but also to reclaim, reconstruct, and expand their languages on their own terms.

Impact Wikipedia functions as a low-cost, high-impact mechanism for language modernization. By engaging in the translation and creation of Wikipedia entries in Indigenous languages, contributors introduce new vocabulary, refine grammar, and experiment with sentence structures necessary for expressing complex, modern ideas. These efforts are not only linguistic but also cultural and political—promoting Indigenous identity, increasing language visibility online, and fostering cross-cultural understanding through interlanguage linking.

Sustainability This initiative contributes directly to the sustainability of endangered languages. Wikipedia allows for continuous collaborative editing, vocabulary expansion, and peer feedback among a small but committed group of language speakers. The article makes clear that without active use—especially in formal, intellectual domains—languages shrink. Wikipedia provides a living space where Indigenous languages can grow, adapt, and survive in a digital and globalized world.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Speakers

• Khu, Iok-sun

From Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Currently a student in the Department of Ethnology at National Chengchi University. My research interests focus on Tuva and Mongolia. Been editing Wikipedia for over ten years, since elementary.

I also serve as the President of the Preparatory Committee for the Formosan Vexillological Association.

• Limeth75