Hi Servien,
There is a major fallacy in your argument.
That is that you are saying "...is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon..."
But there is no absolute division of dialects.
In your artificial linguistic constructed world you'd like everybody
to believe in, all Dutch speakers of Low Saxon can understand one
another and speak identically, and all German Low Saxon speakers can
understand one another and speak identically, yet German Low Saxon
speakers and Dutch Low Saxon speakers can't understand one another.
But this is not the case. The fact of the matter is, Low Saxon itself
is a dialect continuum. A man from one side of the Dutch-German border
can perfectly understand the Nedersaksisch of a man from the other.
Yet you would split them into "Dutch Low Saxon" and "German Low
Saxon"
categories. This is preposterous.
Another huge problem with the current Low Saxon Wikipedia is that it
seems it's written in Missingsch rather than "real" Low Saxon. I would
like to find out more about this particular issue, though.
Wouter has said before that people on opposite sides of the border can
understand each other well enough, but that a Pommersch speaker can't
understand a speaker of t Grunnings, and for this reason Germany and
the Netherlands need different Wikipedias based on nation for Platt,
rather than on actual solid linguistic distinctions.
Obviously, a speaker of Pommersch can't understand a speaker of
Grunnings, but a speaker of Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs should be
able to have a conversation with few difficulties.
Also, it is a common linguistic principle that intelligibility is
greatly increased in the written word. I could not, for my life,
understand Derek Ross if he told me about Scotland in Scots, yet if he
wrote it down I would be able to understand it at a good level. A
speaker of Navajo and a speaker of Western Apache can only understand
each other a little bit, but the written word is almost completely
mutually comprehensible. German and Dutch aren't really mutually
comprehensible when spoken, but when written you can get at least the
gist of what the other person is saying.
Recently, somebody filed a request on the requests for new languages
page for a Triestin Wikipedia. Almost the whole world considers
Triestin to be a dialect of Venet, yet this person and his supporters
consider it to be a different language.
So I asked for a sample from two independent sources. The samples were
nearly identical. I posted them, and he said "Well, I would translate
it this way" even though both of my translations were provided by
native speakers. His "alternative" translation was still nearly
identical, and those differences that WERE added could be explained as
purposeful linguistic manipulations to make it more different from
Venet. (Similarly, Bokmål and Nynorsk have various acceptable variant
forms. In many cases, there are forms in Bokmål which are identical to
forms in Nynorsk. Often, people [especially Nynorsk-users]
purposefully avoid forms similar to Bokmål to make their writing more
distinctly Nynorsk)
The main problem is how to solve a dialect continuum. Creating
separate Wikipedias based on national borders is just ignoring the
problem. Oostfreesk speakers and Pommersch speakers will still not be
able to understand each other. Oostfreesk and Stellingwarfs speakers
will still be able to understand each other. Teh world will keep on
turning. And we will have side-stepped the problem rather than
attempting to look for a workable solution.
Mark
On 03/07/05, Servien Ilaino <nl2b(a)europe.com> wrote:
Hi Mark,
It's quite ununderstandable, it's not just the orthography, but in Germany
they use different words so you have to know that dialect to understand it.
I can understand the first sentence, but the second sentence is very hard to
understand, the first part of this sentence is understandable as well, at
"veet nu Bescheed" it's completely ununderstandable for any Low Saxon
speaker in the Netherlands: "Man de Bezeukers vun de Lezung miet Hartmut
Cyriacks un Peter Niszen veet nu Bescheed euver den plattduutschen Harry
Potter. De Kulturvereen "PEP" un de Stadtbeukerie Kelinghuzen harrn de
baaiden Plattmakers inlaodt, un dat veer en heel gode Idee..."
The first sentence of that text is even different in Dutch-Low Saxon: "Wie
weet nog wat en teuvernaor is? Dat et Platduutse woord deurveur "Sauwberer"
is, bin de meeste minsen waorschynlik al vergeten. (Plattdeutsch: "Wokeen
veet noch, vat en Teuverer is? Dut ole plattduutsche Wort veur "Zaauberer"
hebbt de mehrsten Luud maaist vergeten.")
Hope you get my point now...
Servien Ilaino
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Williamson"
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 17:00:59 -0700
Hi Servien,
Please check out
http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=HP_op_Platt&variant=k…
and tell me what you think of the conversion.
It's obviously not perfect but I'm still working on it.
Any tips for improvements (ie, specific spelling errors) are welcome.
Mark
On 02/07/05, Servien Ilaino wrote:
> Sorry it's suppose to be
>
http://nds.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Servien Ilaino"
> To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage
> Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:11:47 -0500
>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I requested Dutch-Low Saxon a few weeks ago and I kind of made my
> own
> > mainpage for Wikipedia (if it ever gets created that is...) but
> anyway...
> > for people who like to check it out here is the link:
> >
http://nds.wikipedia.org/Bruker:Servien/Heufdbladsyde
> >
> > Please post any suggestions and stuff, like to read some comments.
> >
> > Question: On Wikipedia-L posts are mostly grouped together, but how
> do
> > you do that? (messages below each other like on wikipedia ": and ::
> and
> > :::" to show those are the replies. I hope you kind of understand
> it
> > because I don't really know how to explain it myself haha.)
> >
> > Servien Ilaino!
> >
> > --
> >
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POSSIT MATERIARI
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