On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 10:26:43 +0100, Skriptor <skriptor(a)jhenning.de> wrote:
3. Why are you
so much against these Wikipedias being created if they
are as you say so useless? Could it hurt?
That would depend on how much difference there is in the written
languages/dialects in China, wouldn't it?
Owing to my very limited knowledge of Chinese, I have to hypothesize
here. It seems to have been said that Chinese writing is the same all
over the country - same glyphs, same meaning attached to the glyphs.
Only the spoken language appears to differ so much as to be mutually
incomprehensible.
This is far from the truth. There is a standard written language, yes,
but it is based on Mandarin. Colloquial writings in regional varieties
use different grammar, different vocabulary, and even different
characters. (The popular book "he zanhwa" had to be translated to
Mandarin before it could be read by non-Wu speakers)
If this is indeed the case, I cannot quite see the
point of different
Chinese wikipedias. This would appear to me similar to having a British
wikipedia, an American one, and an Australian one, on the grounds that
both spelling and pronounciation varies. And that would, IMHO, hurt,
because you'd have needless duplication and fragmentation of articles.
It would be so much more difficult for the reader to find information
on a given subject, which is after all the main point of a wikipedia.
Of course, it would be different if there were significant differences
among the way the various Chinese languages/dialects were written.
Which there are, if you write them instead of an artificial written
standard which is really based on the vocabulary and grammar of a
different language.