Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Focus languages/Form/English

Language: English

Language details

What is the language, language family, usual scripts, where is it spoken, by how many people, and what other languages do speakers (%) of this language usually speak? (Some of this information can be found in the article list of languages by total number of speakers)

English is a Western Indo-European language usually written in Latin script. It is spoken worldwide as a second language, and the majority native language in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, an official and the main language of Singapore, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. There are about 360 Million native speakers and about 980 Million second language speakers. See en:English language.

Current representation of this language in Wikimedia projects

Is there a Wikipedia or a Wiktionary? Is it a language in Wikidata? If yes, what are the statistics for pages in Wikipedia or Wiktionary, or for Lexemes in Wikidata? (Details are in m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects, and in the local Special:Statistics pages, and in Ordia for Lexemes.

• en:, about 6.2 Million articles, about 144,000 active contributors
• wikt:en:, about 6.5 Million pages, 1,800 active contributors
• English (Q1860) has about 69,000 Lexemes in Wikidata (see on Ordia)

Current representation of this language in other sources

Is there an open corpus of text for this language? How many books are published in this language? Is this language taught in schools? Is it an official language of a country or region? (Please link to details)

There are many and large easily available corpora in English. It is a major language with many books. It is an official language in many countries, and used in schools. See en:English language. English is probably one of the best represented languages in the world.

Seed group of participants

Describe a bit about the seed group that wants to coordinate and actively participate. Describe its size, its current activity, why this group will likely still exist in three years time. Does anyone in the group know how to code? How many in the group know English? How many in the group are not living where the language is spoken, or are not native speakers?

There is a large community of English contributors, both from native and second language backgrounds, across many different geographies and cultures. There are many users who know how to code. They all speak English. There are many who are not native and live in non-English speaking places.

Potential for community growth

Describe the potential for the language community to grow. Is Internet access widely available? Through which kind of devices usually? What is the literacy rate in the language community? Are there universities, vocational schools, or similar institutions, and how large are the student populations?

The community is already large and hasn't grown for many years.

Openness of the existing community to innovation

If there is a Wikipedia in that language, how open has it been to Wikidata? To Article Placeholder? To bot editing and usage of modules?

English Wikipedia has extensive bot usage, has created some of the most widely copied modules and templates. They have some of the earliest experience with bot creating articles (see Rambot). They have been reluctant regarding a broad adoption of Wikidata, given that their own community is in fact larger than the Wikidata community and thus can provide sufficient quality control itself.