[Wikipedia-l] Request for creation of Dutch-Low Saxon (nds-nl)

[Wouter Steenbeek]

>As I noted before, it is a dialect continuum.
All of the continental West Germanic language variants form a dialect 
continuum, with the possible exception of the Frisian tongues.
>Stellingwarfs and Middel-pommersch are surely not mutually
>intelligible, but Grunnegers and Oostfreesk very well should be.
Yes, so are Berlinic and High German. And East-Veluws and Dutch. But 
Grunnegers and Oostfreesk are not or barely mutually intelligible when 
written down, because of the different spellings.

>You are foolishly dividing Platt by nations. This is illogical. If we
>had an Oostfreesk Wikipedia, Grunnegers-speakers would surely
>understand it and vice-versa, even though Grunnegers is in the
>Netherlands and Oostfreesk is mostly in Germany.

"Foolishly"... Mr. I-owe-all-the-world's-languages'-wisdom.... May I point 
at the difference in spelling once more? And don't you think that the bulk 
of the Dutch Low-Saxon dialects share some features most German dialects 
don't?
>The problem of dialect continuum is a very difficult one.
Yes, so it can't be solved by one such disregarding message.
>HOWEVER, given the community reaction to a request for a Baseldytsch
>Wikipedia, I think the same is logical for a request for a "Dutch Low
>Saxon" Wikipedia
Is it? Is Servien requesting a Wikipedia for just one town, or region? No, 
she obviously realises that, though the speaking communities hardly link 
dialects on any higher level than their own region (they will never say they 
speak Low Saxon, but always either the dialect of their own village or 
region, Twents, Sallands, Drents etc.), we should group some of them 
together. This is very different from what the proposer of the Baseldytsch 
Wikipedia did: he simply said: "I have no affinity with the other Alemannic 
dialects, so I want to open one for my dialect only".
>-- your language may be different to whatever degree
>than what many people on X Wikipedia use, but there is no rule
>forbidding its use. There is no rule against writing pages and pages
>and pages of content on nds.wiki in Stellingwarfs or Achterhooks. When
>I suggested doing this, I got a cold response that Dutch Low Saxon and
>German Low Saxon aren't mutually intelligible. Before whinging to us
>about that, can you at least actually try to use your dialect on
>nds.wiki to prove to us that it really doesn't work?
Some users of nds: made clear that they only use one spelling: the Sass one. 
Dutch Low Saxon dialects are /never/ written in German spellings, except 
with some German-initiated projects.

>Mark
>
Imo, the combined facts of mutual confusion in both speach and spelling 
makes this idea a valuable one.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger 
http://messenger.msn.nl/