[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

Mon Sep 19 11:40:30 UTC 2005

There is no Wikipedia in "Scot's English". There is a Wikipedia in Scots.

Now, please list out for me some of the differences between American
and Commonwealth English which one is likely to see in the average
encyclopaedia article.

How often will encyclopaedia articles talk about nappies/diapers,
dummies/pacifiers, lifts/elevators, prams/strollers, or anything else
where the essential terminology differs?

The reason there's a separate Wikipedia for Scots is because usage of
Scots on the English Wikipedia would never be tolerated. However, both
Commonwealth and American English are tolerated and widely used
throught the English Wikipedia.

I, for one, am an American who prefers Commonwealth English, but
having received my education in American spelling (or as you would
say, "misspelling"), my writing tends to be a jumble of forms rather
than all one way or all the other. I tend to write "encyclopedia",
"traveler", "check", "catalog", but "realise", "internationalisation",
etc. This isn't due to personal preference, but rather habit -- I
would rather read a document in Commonwealth English, and I try to
write in it, but since I don't go over my spelling carefully, I tend
to end up using American spellings most of the time for certain
lexical items (such as "encyclopedia"), but Commonwealth spellings
most of the time for others (such as "rationalisation").

See, now, that the most common differences are mere differences of
spelling. And they aren't particularly frequent. How often does
Wikipedia say "nationalise"/"nationalize", "realise"/"realize"? Things
like "kilometres"/"kilometers" are a bit more frequent.

But still, in the past, there haven't been separate Wikipedias for
such tiny differences. You seem to regard Anglo-Saxon as similar to
English. A sample sentence from the Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia, for you to
decipher (with accents and special characters removed):

"Lundene is heafodburg thaes Geanlaehtan Cynerices and Englalandes,
and is thara greatostre worulde burga an. Hit haefth seofon millonan
leoda in Greatrum Lundene (hatte Lundeneras)."

Now is that Balkanisation? "heafodburg"?? Are you kidding me? (in case
you're wondering, it means "capital"). "cynerice"? do you get that? It
means "kingdom".

There isn't an actual Wikipedia for Middle English, only a test
Wikipedia, but it is also a bit hard to understand:

"A dogge is the beste that man hath as a housbeste. Doggen arn 'mannes
best frend' as the saying goth."

"Hallo. It is trewe, as Briane hath seyde, when thaet man sholde
scryven as in this cas in middel englisce, that suiche a nam is brodre
than man wolde thinken, for it refereth to a period of foure hundred
yaren, in which many different scrives manneren. Peradventure 'twere
bettre thaet we formed some sort of concordat on this, but I fere
thaet this coulde forfenden and demarken forcome contributiouns"

Compared to that, American vs Commonwealth differences seem tiny.

Mark

On 19/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool, mockery is for trolls.
>  This is not about Balkanisation, it's about separating American-English
> from English.
>  But come to think of it - yes, have one for every variation you like, and
> let natural selection take care of the rest. Just as long as English is
> English, and not American.
>  Have you seen the "Scot's English" one? Do you not call that Balkanisation?
>  If you want to have a legitimate criteria for a language, a different
> orthography has got to be a clear one.
> In English there are two - American and non-American.
> Orthography is the main issue, meaning is another.
>  If you want to go academic - which is surely the best way to back this
> whole argument up, you should scan this (ironically american) leading
> insitute of linguistic research:
>  http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng
>  On 19/09/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > (note: I've split this into paragraphs for readability)
> >
> > Jack wrote:
> > > I want American English to have a separate Wikipedia from English
> > > English - this would mean copying
> > >
> > > I typed it in a hurry at the end of my shift with a view to
> > > responding to any response, later.
> > >
> > > I've placed a more detailed post on the helpdesk page. I think,
> > > however, that it's apt that I should go into even more depth here.
> > >
> > > I've asked about English on Wikipedia before and been told that they
> > > think it's acceptable for English articles to be in a mish-mash of
> > > dialects and spellings; but having seen the range of ludicrous
> > > languages available - including variant forms of English: Scots
> > > English and Middle English etc... I've now decided I must make a
> > > request and campaign properly for American English to be given a
> > > seperate Wikipedia language from (English) English.
> > >
> >
> > I must remind viewers who are still with us that Balkanisation Is Evil.
> >
> > > It's simply infuriating and offensive for the misspellings of a
> > > dialect of English to take precedence over the standard language -
> > > I'm sure Spanish, French and Portuguese speakers would feel
> > > similarly; it's cultural imperialism.
> > >
> > > If you have different forms of Chinese Wikipedia (I'm a graduate of
> > > Jap & Chi so I'm aware of xyz); if you have Wikipedias for dialects
> > > and older forms of English; if you Wikipedias for countries and
> > > languages with far smaller populations, economic/political importance
> > > and internet presences; then the English of the British Isles and
> > > Commonwealth - the standard and original form of English - simply
> > > *has* to be the only form of English that can use the term "English"
> > > on Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Some might say that it is "British English", this term is fallacious
> > > (even if you can find it in a dictionary) no English, British,
> > > British Isles or even Commonwealth native understands or recognises
> > > the term - it is both meaningless and fallacious: there are no
> > > "British English" speakers in the world - there are English
> > > (nationality) English (language) speakers, Welsh English speakers,
> > > Scottish English speakers, Irish English speakers, Cornish English
> > > speakers and so on...
> > >
> > > Whereas the term "American English" is not.
> > >
> > > When I go to Wikipedia English, and type a search for "colour" I
> > > should not expect to be redirected to "color" which is a recent
> > > spelling of a dialect of English that has arisen over the last couple
> > > of centuries perhaps - it is simply *not* *English* it is
> > > *American-English*. I'm more than happy for American-English speakers
> > > to have an American-English wikipedia and have all their weird and
> > > wonderful spellings and vocabulary - and it may well turn out to be
> > > the biggest wiki; but I don't want to select Wikipedia English and
> > > type in "Aubergine" and get "Eggplant"; "Nappy" and get "Diaper"; or
> > > "Tap" and get "Faucet", it's simply unacceptable, and against the
> > > spirit of multilingualism and accuracy that wikipedia is supposed to
> > > strive for. Hence I want to campaign in all seriousness that The
> > > English Wikipedia is duplicated, and one is called American-English,
> > > the other remaining English, and the task of correcting spelling,
> > > vocab and grammar can begin.
> > >
> >
> > I agree completely. Furthurmore, I feel that we shall need an Australian
> > English Wikipedia to handle the many words in Australian English which
> > differ from English English (and possibly Queensland English, New South
> > Wales English, et. al), a South African English Wikipedia to accomodate
> > the heavy use of Afrikaans, a New Zealand English Wikipedia to account
> > for the lack of vowels, a Canadian English Wikipedia to account for the
> > number of French words, a Canadian French Wikipedia to complement it,
> > and a Singlish Wikipedia because it has a funny name.
> >
> > Here's a far better idea: Let's go back to Proto-Indo-European. Imagine
> > the amount of server space we could save!
> >
> > Conversely, imagine a Beowulf cluster of English Wikipedias!
> >
> > > The Campaign for an English Wikipedia is not about Britain (the
> > > fourth largest economy in the world, a population of about 60m, 55%
> > > of whom are online), it's also about a whole host of other countries
> > > and regions (over a billion people) that do not use American-English,
> > > but use English instead as a lingua franca (many with complete
> > > fluency):
> > >
> > <snip overly long list>
> > > The term Commonwealth English is therefore also apt, but
> > American-English
> > > has no right to usurp the title English, from English! Wikipedia should
> > > reflect this.
> > >
> >
> > I find your theories interesting/intriguing and wish to subscribe to
> > your newsletter/journal.
> >
> > --
> > Alphax | /"\
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> > http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
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