What seems clear is that Mark has been consistently argumentative,
facetious, and fallacious; and even more so since this post.
Not satisfied with trying to start a "row", he wants to ban me for not
agreeing with him.
I think he is coming across as needlessly aggressive and pompous.
However wrong or stupid anyone thinks my posts are, vomiting bile through
the keyboard is out of order.
Mark clearly didn't check his facts before digging his troll-hole, and now
looks silly, that's not my fault. I apologise for using caps, I did it to
distinguish my text from his, not for any other reason, Mark's drivel didn't
get me remotely excited or annoyed - clearly you can't tell teh emotional
content of everything in text form.
Anyway, You can't just label everyone you disagree with a troll or make
trollish statements like "x is so obviously trolling us" and not expect a
negative response, if you don't understand what a troll is, search
wikipedia.
I came here not to spend time arguing with impulsive, petulent,
self-important twats like Mark, but to try and get a change that someone
else proposed, in fact.
If you look trough Wikipedia, there is stuff on Commonwealth English, and
on the differences.
In the article it is recognised that some Canadians use a lot of
Americanisms; however a lot of Canadians resent being mistaken for
Americans, and like to align themselves with the Commonwealth.
So some may find the term suits them.
What's abundantly clear is that the language of the USA is markedly
different to that of the British Isles. In Grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
and semantics; and this means that it can make it unintelligible to non-US
English speakers. It IS legitimate and accurate to call it a foreign
language from the perspective of an English speaker from England and the
British Isles in general, because a large amount of commonly used vocab,
grammar, syntax and semantics are both unintelligible (to varying degrees);
and simply not accepted as the way to speak the language (more than just
spelling).
Evidence has been posted (not by me) on this list (see the Wictionary posts)
that AmE and BrE (OED terms) have distinct orthographies.
Would anybody on this list disagree that AmE is a clearly distinct dialect
of English? It would appear not.
These two factors alone seem to be enough for other dialects to get a
Wikipedia.
Whether "British English" gets it's own Wiki is up to British people
contributing. The problem is having an "English Wikipedia" that's mostly
American-English, and a "British English" one. It's like splitting
Portuguese into a "Portuguese Wikipedia" that's actually
Brazilian-Portuguese, and having a "Lusitanian Portuguese" one for
Portuguese Portuguese; as has also been noted, this issue is not simply one
about English.
Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as
"trolls".
On 23/09/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1) I don't call people I disagree with
barking mad, unless they really
are barking mad.
I didn't say you "always" or "often" did it. I merely pointed out
that
it seemed rather hypocritical to complain that somebody was emotional
enough to [presumably deliberately] use all caps in an e-mail, when
you yourself had just got emotional (and personal) enough to accuse
that person of being "barking mad".
2) Yes, but how many of them? I never said with
absolute certainty
that all of those were BS examples, only that much of the list was BS.
No, but you did confidently state that "The vast majority of those
aren't even real differences", followed by a set of examples, which
were, presumably, among those which you thought were in fact "BS" -
otherwise what are they examples of? That many of the examples you
picked were then confirmed as differences by other users considerably
weakens your position, does it not?
None of the examples which I made it clear I was
fairly certain were
universal were objected to
So, the lists linked to weren't 100% brilliant. Perhaps a comment that
"I'm not sure all those examples are accurate" would have been a
better comment? And remember, nobody on this list [as far as we know]
actually *wrote* either of those lists, they just pointed them out as
a convenient example.
even many of the ones which were
objected to proved a point, for example "autumn" vs "fall":
there's
one variant that's understood in both places, and another that is only
understood in one. Which one should be chosen?
That's not proof that there's no difference (which you were, to put it
charitably, strongly implying); it's proof that there is a difference
for which a compromise solution exists. An interesting point, but not
one which warrants labelling anyone "barking mad".
To respond to the implied suggestion that we always use "autumn", I'd
guess it would more of a reader-oriented policy than a writer-oriented
one. In my experience, US writers tend to more commonly and naturally
use "fall", so even if they'd understand "autumn" easily enough,
it
might require conscious thought (or correction by other users) to
always *write* it. Not that that's a fatal flaw, just a thought for
discussion.
[I'm not sure arguing about definitions of "troll" gets us anywhere,
so I shall pass over that part of the discussion]
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]
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