On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:54 PM, JP Béland lebo.beland@gmail.com wrote:
Good day Milos (and others if you know about that),
I'd like to investigate that more please if you could assist me. My contact at the Cree Cultural Institute (after I told him we could create an Innu Wikipedia separate from the Cree one which has Innu articles right now) that we (may) should divide the Innu into dialects as well because of huge phonological differences between West and East. On Ethnologue, where Innu is called Montagnais (ISO code moe), they mention Western Montagnais and Eastern Montagnais (exactly as described by the guy from the Cree Cultural Insitute), but they don't mention any "sub-codes" for those. See http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=moe .
That being said, what would be the advantages of having those codes for the "sub-dialects"? I mean, the intent is not to have separate Wikipedias. It's perfectly possible to sort the articles according to those dialect on one Wikipedia without having codes.
If the information on Ethnologue is correct, it suggests implicitly that there is one standard language; or that the differences between the dialects are not big.
But, anyway, no matter of differences, the population is too small to be able to drive two Wikipedia editions. I suggest creating one Innu Wikipedia with possibility to write in all dialects. Or, if possible, to create a kind of conversion engine in the future, so all communities would be able to contribute and read in their own dialect on the same pages.