 Hello, good morning, and thank you for attending this lecture. So today I'm going to talk about how I went from writing Wikipedia to writing a novel, which is something completely different. I'm not a linguist, I didn't study literature, nothing to do with writing novels. And why I think it's the next step we should take as a Wikimedians. So before we get started, I'd like to give some background. As you know, there are 319 active Wikimedians, but less than one-third of them have over 50,000 articles. Some Wikimedians have hundreds of articles, just 200, 300, 400, very, very small ones. And there are 58 million articles in all Wikimedians. We combine them together. There are around 58,000, but only about half of those are only in 10 languages. So you can see there is a big gap language-wise. Especially many unrepresented languages, many, many small languages, that doesn't have enough information on Wikipedia. And that's basically our motto, you know, to have access, to give access and knowledge to all people. However, there are around 7,000 languages spoken in the world as of today. According to UNESCO, only 65 are safe. The rest have a different levels of endangerment, from mildly endangered to very, very, very severely endangered. You may think that some of these languages that are endangered are spoken by probably 100 people, 200 people, 1,000 people. But no, actually some are spoken by millions, like Lombard, spoken by 6 or 7 million people. You may think, how come this is endangered? There are many reasons. Or Aymara, or Yiddish, or Belarusian, which is the official language even. How come it's endangered? Why? Because in some countries, there are two official languages. And one is used by most people because it's language of communication, language of spoken in neighboring country, or a country that exerts influence over the other. Or it's only used in oral communication, never in written communication, which also affects the language. The fact that there are millions of people who speak one language, but they don't write in it, it's a problem. It's a problem we have for a language. We need to make sure that the languages are spoken, written, there is media created, there is everything created in that language, in order for the language to survive and thrive. Now, the topic, the language that I mostly write in it, is Judy Spanish, is spoken by about 150,000 people. Most of them in the third age, over 60, 70, 80, there is one big problem because many of those speakers, by the way, that language is the language spoken by the descendants of the Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 1500s. Just to give some background. When they went to Latin America, Spanish and Judeo-Spanish are very similar. They share 90% of the lexicon of the words, but they're pronounced differently, the grammar rules are different. But in Latin America and in Spain, it was leveled. So most of those speakers tried to speak Spanish because it was very easy for them to use it, and they had children, and the children never learned Judeo-Spanish, they learned Spanish, which is the official language. It was easy for them and also to adapt to the society. So that's another problem in this particular language that I write in. Today, there are studies and lectures in academic journals written in Judeo-Spanish in the US, in Spain, in Israel, some of the countries. There's another problem, the language is not standardized, which is another problem that endangered languages face. There are radio programs sponsored by the state in Israel and in Spain. And there is one weekly newspaper that has only one page in this language. It started as a full newspaper in Judeo-Spanish in Turkey, but due to the market needs, started to offer more pages in Turkish because it was in Turkey. And now today, the newspaper is a full newspaper but has only one page in the language, in the name. And there's one monthly magazine, and it's based in subscription, that's about what is in Judeo-Spanish. So as you can imagine, it's very, very endangered. There is probably 10 children who speak the language as a mother tongue. And I know hundreds of people who speak the language fluently as a mother tongue, but they never pass to the children. The children know a little bit and obviously, since the children know a little bit, they didn't pass to the grandchildren. And that's where the language dies. Now, okay. Now about literature. These images that you can see are from covers of newspapers that started 200 years ago. They don't exist anymore. The language used to be written with a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet. The first books were published in the 1500s. Actually, the Jews were the ones who brought the first printing presses into the Ottoman Empire. The first newspaper, as I said, began operations in 1871. Now today, because Turkey changed from the Ottoman script, which is a variant of the Perso-Arabic script. They switched to Latin alphabets. So all the languages in Turkey need to be written in Latin alphabets. So they switch to a Latin alphabet. So today, you won't see newspapers in or documents in Judeo-Spanish written like that, just with the Latin alphabet. The first original novel started was published in 1924. The previous ones were just translations of French classics printed in newspapers. It was one chapter every week, so people started to buy the newspaper. That was the only way for the newspaper to finance itself. And nobody published any book in this language today. The most recent ones were one from 1999, which is a rabbi from Bosnia, from Sarajevo. And one Mexican writer who wrote one in 2012. That's it. Before that, the last book was written in 1924. So you can see the level of the low level of literary production, and that's what I think is so directly related to the danger of the language. And probably the languages that you speak, if you speak a minority language and it's in danger, you can also think, is there any book, any printed media available in my language? Is it common now? Does it happen? Do I see them? Is it either easy to find? So that's one of the biggest problems, I think. Now, you all remember the COVID-19 pandemic. We all suffered. We were all stuck at home. We all lost loved ones. And we had to be distant from people that were close to us. Remember, we had to go to the groceries with gloves and wash everything, all that. So I have two minutes, okay. So then that's when I decided to write because there was nothing for me to do. Okay, so while writing a book, when you write a book, you connect emotions when you write. When you read articles on Wikipedia, you read facts, which is important, but your heart doesn't beat. This is why I think information is very important when you put it to read, you learn, but you don't get emotions. And you as Wikimediants, you know how to write, you know how to convey a message. This is what I think is the most important thing, that nothing beats reading in your own language, in your own mother tongue. You can read in many tongues, many languages, but the one that you speak as a mother tongue, this is the best way to read. And when you create something, you can write. I'm not a writer. I mean, now I am. I mean, working on the book, but think of the future, think of all the people that will read what you wrote. Think of what you can do as a Wikimedia. It's not just writing on Wikipedia, write a book, write a poem, write a short story, publish it, make people read and get emotion to get emotional about reading content in your mother tongue. That's what I think we should do. And this is the next step we should do as Wikimedians, writing a content, create videos, sing in your mother tongue. If you have questions, motivational presentation, most are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Yes. So the question is how many Latino speakers are in today? How about 150,000? Most of them in their 60s, 70s and 80s. All right. Thank you everyone for coming. Also, those who are watching us online, if you have questions, you are free to contact me and happy to answer questions.