I agree that Spanish is not too difficult, but it will take a lot of effort
to learn sufficient Spanish to be able to read a Spanish article without
using a dictionary. A "sencillo" article will be readable without a
dictionary for anyone with a basic knowlegde of Spanish.
Another advantage is that probable most Italian and Portugese people will be
able to read "sencillo", without even knowing any Spanish.
Greetings,
Johan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Austin Hair" <adhair(a)gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Simple Spanish?
On 6/21/06, Johan Bos
<skatinghacker(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Not as far as I know. I just meant articles in
simple Spanish words.
Readable for people who just understand for example 1500 words.
English is the most widely spoken second language on the planet, the
lingua franca of international communication; it's also really hard.
The argument for the "simple English" editions is that with more
non-native speakers than native ones, a special effort should be made
to cater to those who haven't quite mastered this undoubtedly
difficult tongue. While I don't agree, I do recognize the validity of
that point of view.
While Spanish may have more native speakers, it doesn't enjoy the same
ubiquity, and its mostly regular syntax means it doesn't pose the same
difficulty to novices. You seem to acknowledge the second point
yourself when you talk about "sencillo" as nothing more than a
limited-vocabulary edition of the Spanish Wikipedia.
We're only just starting to recover from the damage done by the
infamous Enciclopedia Libre fork, and I can't see anyone supporting
any division of those efforts right now.
Austin
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