Hi everyone,
I hate to say it but I am getting contradictory information from you and Heiko.
In fact, I am getting contradictory information from the various things you write yourself.
Mark, it is no use arguing about all this with you any longer.
Does this mean that you have no logical explanations anymore?
Also, how do you explain for the websites I linked you to? They use such terms as "drentse taol" rather than "drentse streektaol" or "drentse dialekt"... nobody says "spellingswyse" like you do on your test-mainpage, they all used different terms... it's suspicious.
Mark, I am fed up with trying to explain things to you.
So you don't respond to it. Just say you're fed up. That works well.
And, why do you change your mind now about Low Saxon being your native language?? It either is, or it isn't.
He made perfectly clear how he sees himself. Please read it again.
In his e-mails, he did. Yet, he makes clear through babel templates that it is not his mother-tongue. This is confusing, and self-contradictory.
Heiko makes a distinction of spelling, not seeming to have realised yet that orthographic conversion is a full possibility although I tried to explain it ...
Mark, we are not interested in such a converter. Again: the difference is spelling AND vocabulary. When editing nds.wikipedia.org I do not want to be limited by having to worry about side effects of your converter. Finding the right words for nds.wikipedia.org is difficult enough. We have spent quite some time on finding words where most dictionaries fail. (E.g. what is "jungle" in Platt, or "abbot"? It took us quite some time to sort that out.) So please, please stop talking about your converter. This might work for converting azerbaijani from cyrillic to latin, but not for us. (As the saying goes: "Which part of NO don't you understand.")
Perhaps the part of "no" where you thought I was talking about converting from Ron's orthography to German orthography? At what point did you actually understand what I was offering? That is the part of "no" I didn't understand. Like, "Would you like a banana?" -- "No, I would not like an elephant"; "No, I said a BANANA" -- "I already said, I don't want a banana!".
And, you said, and I quote (text in parenthesis is mine):
(> > HOWEVER, I still believe it is wrong to divide on national borders.
From what I can tell, Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Dreents, Tweants, and Achterhooks are all different enough from one another to warrant separate Wikipedias.)
The national border is a border of spelling.
Now, can you honestly tell me that is not confusing? You said in the newest e-mail that it is of spelling and vocabulary, yet in one from nearly a day ago you said exactly "The national border is a border of spelling"??
You may have gotten 5 supporters, but how many of them can write in this "Dutch Low Saxon" language you speak of?
5 is five. period. Servien wants to go on and we back him up. And I am very much curious to find out what the community will look like that will form from this seed. I really want to know, and I want to see this started soon.
So, if I request a new Wikipedia in Drents, and I find 5 people to support me, no matter what their credentials, it should be created right away? Do you wonder why the Sranang Tongo and Papiamentu Wikipedias have not been created?? Perhaps it is because there are still outlying issues with them...?
Perhaps the main point in all this discussion with you has not been mentioned before. you do not even come from the Low Saxon language area. It is OUR language, not YOURS, and how many or how few wikipedias we want for our Low Saxon language is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, and whether or not nds-nl.wikipedia.org will be created is not up to you to decide. This is my final word.
Oh, so it is your language, but your native language is Hochdeutsch? This is just fabulous. So, if I learn to speak perfect patentplatt (don't tell me it isn't patentplatt, I forwarded you accusations from Jonny Meinbohm, and put on the list accusations from Ron hahn, both of whom are, unlike you, native speakers), it suddenly becomes my language? Interesting. In fact, my great-great-grandparents spoke Platt natively... so it must be my language, then??
So here again is my official request: please create nds-nl.wikipedia.org, or is this the wrong place to ask for this? If so, please tell me whom to ask.
It isn't that simple. You don't just request a Wikipedia, and then suddenly it is created. Look at how long ago the Scots Wikipedia was first requested; it was created only a week or two ago. It didn't have any issues regarding it, either.
An Extremaduran Wikipedia looked promising -- support from native speakers (which doesn't exist here; even if Servien is a native speaker, he is only 1, in the last 4 Wikipedias to be created, there were at least 2 potential contributors, and often as much as 5), language-promotion organisations (none here), and the like. Yet, there were some questions about the status of Extremaduran: is it a language, or a dialect? These concerns were very, very short, no long discussions. And yet, it was never created, and interest gradually waned.
Cantonese, for which I advocated, was supported by well over 5 people, many of them native speakers. And yet, due to the fact that nobody ever reached agreement, it has not been created.
When there are no disputes, it usually takes a long time for it to be created anyways. When there are outstanding issues, it takes even longer.
I would like to remind you that I hold no official position with the Wikimedia Foundation.
However, the whole idea was submitted to the list, and as a member of this list and of the community, I have the right to argue against it. This does not mean that it will not be created, although it is likely to be created substantially later if the dispute is not resolved, which you certainly have not tried to do ("I am tired of explaining things to you" -- Boris Lohnzweiger provided such a nice, point-by-point response to me... why can't others do that? why do you just repeat yourselves over and over? "oh right whatever, but it's still separate"?)
You did not address any of the individual arguments in my last message, most important among them:
a) Servien's e-mails say that there is a clear line between Netherlands (Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Drèents, Tweants, and Achterhooks) and German (Oostfreesk, Nordnedersassisch, Westphaelsch, etc. etc. etc.) varieties of Platt/Low Saxon. This is fine. ...until, he writes an article in his test-wikipedia which categorises:
de noordelike groep (Sleeswyk-Holstein, Nedersaksen, Grunningen, Drenthe, Stellingwarven, and Overyssel.) de suudwestelike groep (Westfaolen, Twente, Sallaand, Gelderland).
Now, I'm sure you know the countries for these: Schleswig-Holstein is in Germany, Saxony is in Germany, Grunnegers is in the Netherlands, Drèents is Netherlands, Stellingwarfs is Netherlands, and Overyssel is Netherlands.
And, Westphalia is in Germany, Tweants is spoken in the Netherlands, Sallands in the Netherlands, and Veluws in the Netherlands.
So, both of his principal divisions of Low Saxon include varieties from both countries. This is the primary contradiction here, and I would like to see someone explain it -- it has not been explained before, because I only noticed it today (he created the article yesterday, I think).
b) Regardless of what you think, there is a tradition of separate literature in Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Drèents, Tweants, Achterhooks, Sallands, and Veluws -- the Bible, first of all; the Asterix comics also.
And then, there is the fact that each one of those websites I linked to refers to each one as a language -- Drentsetoal, not Drentse-streektoal or Drentse-dialekt.
c) Although important, this is probably not directly related to the issue of nds-nl: Someone searching for a word for "abbot" is surely not a native speaker; I imagine most native speakers would know "jungle" too.
Both Jonny Meinbohm and Ron Hahn have testified that nds.wiki is written in Patentplatt, in fact I sent you the text of a ballad Ron wrote to tease Jonny about it. The ballad is of course in Patentplatt, the translation to real Platt he provided later (I didn't send that part to you, though I offered to if you wanted it) is quite enlightening.
So, let's see credentials here: I am not a native speaker. My command of Low Saxon can be said to be between nds-0 and nds-1. You are not a native speaker. You claim nds-3. Slomox is not a native speaker. He does not give a proficiency level, although my guess would be nds-3.
Ron Hahn and Jonny Meinbohm are both native speakers, and they have both said that it is written in Patentplatt. It's very strange that you ignore the opinions of these people. If I were writing a Wikipedia in a language that wasn't my native language, I would listen very closely to what native speakers had to say.
Mark