[Wikipedia-l] The Borders of Language Variety Tolerance

[Mark Williamson]

I disagree with what you have said about ISO - Ainu has no ISO code,
yet nobody would argue that it is part of the same language as one
that does have one, and this is the case with many more languages as
well.

A language not having an individual ISO code does not nessecarily mean
that the ISO organisation considers it to be a dialect of another
language.

Mark

On 03/05/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could requests for
> > wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted. Neither is generally
> > considered a seperate language (those some linguists do call them
> > languages), but Zeelandic is a clearly bordered regional language which
> > differs about as much from Dutch proper as Nynorsk from Swedish (as far as I
> > can judge) and is, when spoken, very problematic to be understood for Dutch
> > speakers, while Town Frisian is a mixed language with a 16th century
> > Hollandic vocabulary and Frisian grammar and phonetical principles.
> > Moreover, it goes without saying that these variants (to avoid both the term
> > "language" and "dialect") are not allowed on nl:, being a standardised
> > language.
> >
> > I don't necessarily support requests for wikipedias in those (thogh I would
> > be willing to contribute), but I would like to know where the community
> > draws the borders.
> 
> I don't think there's any clear definitions yet, but the points that I
> think would be worth considering are:
> * The amount of difference to an existing language
> * Whether it is generally, somewhere or hardly anywhere considered a
> language rather than a dialect
> * Whether there exists a well-defined and generally accepted orthography
> * Whether there are Wikipedians willing to write for the Wikipedia and how many.
> 
> In general, we have gone with ISO-639 in deciding what is a language
> and what a dialect, only Allemanish and Aromanian have been accepted
> without such a code. However, that too is not an official policy, just
> a "the way we have done it till now".
> 
> Andre Engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> 


-- 
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE