Wikidata:Property proposal/langue d'écriture

writing language (for published authors)

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

Done: writing language (P6886) (Talk and documentation)

Description	for language/s in which a writer has written/published
Data type	Item
Template parameter	on Wikisource : categories of languages for authors
Domain	human (Q5) who publish : writers, authors, scientists, historians, philosophers, journalists, etc... all those used as author (P50) of a textual work... and also organization publish works in their own name.
Allowed values	languoid (Q17376908)
Example 1	Jules Verne (Q33977) -> French (Q150), not Esperanto (Q143)
Example 2	Wilhelm Ostwald (Q12658) -> German (Q188), not Esperanto (Q143)
Example 3	Käthe Schirmacher (Q1651018) -> generally wrote in German (Q188), but also in French (Q150)
Example 4	Émile Boirac (Q18436) -> French (Q150), and Esperanto (Q143) and Latin (Q397) (source : https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb130091408)
Planned use	thousands of writers (> 10000 on frwikisource)
See also	languages spoken, written or signed (P1412)

Motivation

WikiProject Books has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead. @Tpt, VIGNERON, Billinghurst: On wikisources, we need to store (through categories or infoboxes) the languages in which an author wrote, not ALL the languages s/he spokes or reads. It is a very important info for a writer. This info is as specific as the instrument a musician plays... it is identified specifically in UNIMARC (Q2755217)'s field 101, by opposition to field 102 for country (which do not systematically match) on Library catalogs.

translator (Q333634) translate from many languages, but generally only in one or two target language. For library authorities purpose, it is important to know not only the list of languages they translated, but also which are the target language/s.

philologist (Q13418253) and linguist (Q14467526) who, by definition, read and know a lot of languages, generally publish in only one or two, like Georges Dumézil (Q310590) who was said to master dozens of languages (> 30), but only wrote and published in French (Q150)...

We used languages spoken, written or signed (P1412) for long, but it is now flooded with all sorts of languages that people read, or speak, or even understand, which leads to nonsense info about the writing languages of an author, like saying Jules Verne (Q33977) wrote in esperanto, and a discussion on frws, aiming to remove info coming from wikidata because of this...

For years, the solution given by Tpt was to "privilege" the writing language, but this seems to pose problems to esperanto projects... and was systematically undone recently. --Hsarrazin (talk) 22:07, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Accurimbono, Candalua: who asked for something similar in 2015, precisely for the same purpose. --Hsarrazin (talk) 04:59, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Support Useful. --Yann (talk) 05:33, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Strong rationale. NMaia (talk) 06:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support Robin van der Vliet (talk) (contribs) 12:29, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support - PKM (talk) 13:38, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Candalua (talk) 13:34, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't this already stored by the language statements on the works that the author wrote? --Yair rand (talk) 18:52, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Yair rand: Isn't that the most roundabout imaginable way of retrieving that information for use on other wikis? Circeus (talk) 05:34, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support but definition must be precise to avoid overlapping with existing languages spoken, written or signed (P1412) and avoid confussion between writing language and publish language (several authors published in more languages that they know. I understand this is a property of the person not a property of its books), is it ? Amadalvarez (talk) 10:26, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- yes, it is a property of the person, precisely to solve the problem of texts published in many languages, which were translated, without mention of translation ^^ --Hsarrazin (talk) 07:16, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Hsarrazin, Accurimbono, Candalua, Yann, NMaia: @Robin van der Vliet, PKM, Yair rand, Circeus, Amadalvarez: Done ArthurPSmith (talk) 20:20, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]