8.06.2010

Wikipedia - International Edition!

Being a foreign language buff, and an immense liar, I've been doing some intense research on different language versions of Wikipedia, and learning things about their cultures and their people through the ever-present language barrier that separates people so.
Here's what I learned:



http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/ :

-Blackberries are an important tool in telecommunications. Older, non-touchscreen versions seem to be popular.

-The airplane has been invented, a 787 to be specific.

- Their system of counting and numerals goes up to at least 80000. I'm not sure if that's only as high as they've counted or of they cannot support any more numerals. Possibly their primitive blackberries do not support higher numerical values.

- There are trains that go into tunnels through mountainous regions. This is only new information to me because I thought it was all desert over there.


http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ :

- The japanese are aware of, and acknowledge that the world is round.

- Um, well...baseball, flowers

- This picture is called Asian Dust over Aizu-Wakamatsu, so they clearly have some sort of strange dust/atmosphere issues seemingly not present in America. Possibly we can ship them some sort of Swiffer Sweeper bailout.

- The picture is stored in the popular .png format, vastly superior to .jpg and .jpeg formats proving, yet again, Japanese technical superiority


http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/ :

This one is slightly more interesting!

- There is a charismatic gentleman in the corner, leading me to believe that the Korean people are a friendly sort. This is, of course ignoring any post-war hostilities and the fact that North Korea, specifically, you know, hates us and is evil.

- Images of a clearly aryan-type bust and the ruins of Chichen Itza are both present, leading me to infer some sort of inferiority complex. Maybe they should check out je.wikipedia.org.


http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr/ :

- Africa is a popular topic today!! When I click on the link there is a short blurb with a picture of a Medal on it. I'm getting rewarded for simply being interested in Africa, which is either a racist-type thing, trying to cool racial tensions by encouraging cross-cultural enlightenment or some sort of scavenger hunt.

- I'm not a meteorologist, but it seems that Russia can be cloudy

- The number 404.000 is on the screen and I can't imagine why they would need to go three decimal places when those aren't even significant figures.


http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/ :

- There's an article about Paul the octopus. Um, hello Thailand...the world cup ended a month ago. Are you just getting that news now?



http://zu.wikipedia.org/wiki/IsiZulu :

Now I don't think this is a country, because it's just some blue blob on the one end of South Africa. It apparently has 143 articles, and I can only find about 6 or 7, unless they include one for each of these people, in which case that makes maybe 30

- It does not have an article about the vuvuzela.


http://dz.wikipedia.org/wiki/ :

This is some part of Tibet! They want more information! I guess after so many years of Chinese domination, they totally forgot what information was!



http://chr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ :

The Cherokees have a wikipedia all their own!! The main page contains pretty much nothing. A page about the language, though, has an image of, what I would assume to be, their reservation and then a list of codes, probably some sort of Windtalkers-esque Cherokee equivalent.

- A search on the word alcohol brings up a picture of coffee, and a search for the word gambling turns up nothing. Are they unaware of the current state of the Native American culture?


http://he.wikipedia.org/ :

- The whole goddamned thing is backwards. What a surprise. I assume it's less expensive that way.


http://om.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuula_Dura :

- Oromo, yet another African language...I think? Their flag is a picture of Broccoli drawn by a second grader, and at the bottom is a picture of Abraham Lincoln (which also leads me to believe it is Africa, because Lincoln freed the slaves).


http://pcd.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueul :

Spoken in the northern part of France, this has nothing to do with Captain Jean Luc Picard. Lame.


In closing, I'm going to assume that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page is in American English because I can understand it. What I'm getting at is that those Goddamned Brits are totally leeching off of our massive encyclopedic infrastructure!! Go get your own damned language-associated wiki!! Filthy wankers!

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