On Thu, February 10, 2005 4:30 pm, Mark Williamson said:
This policy, Felix, would also disallow prestigious languages, such as Catalan and Frisian, which although they have many speakers are spoken almost exclusively by bilinguals, and I would remind everybody to keep in mind that Cantonese and Wu have far more speakers than either Catalan or Frisian.
If you raise the similarity argument, this would be a blow against our having separate Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu Wikipedias, against separate Danish, Swedish, and Bokmål Wikipedias, and against separate Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian Wikipedias.
The difference with Singlish and Ebonics -> English and Cantonese and Wu -> Mandarin is that there is decidedly a continuum between Singlish and Ebonics -> "Standard" English, but not between Cantonese and Wu -> Mandarin, and that Singlish and Ebonics have no widely agreed-upon written form and that nobody would want to write a Singlish Wikipedia anyways (it is very low prestige and thanks to gov't campaigning it is regarded by most Singaporeans as poor English although experts disagree). [an exception is that Singlish is often used in instant messages and internet postings, but even tabloids don't use it and it has a relatively small number of native speakers when compared to Cantonese and Wu].
This is not to say that if somebody proposes and Ebonics or a Singlish Wikipedia I will be totally opposed, but I do not feel that the case is as strong as with Cantonese and Wu.
I do not see why we need a restrictive language policy when in the past our policy has been any and all - if the speakers of a speech variety want a separate Wikipedia, they are granted it, no matter how similar the two are, with the general exception of conlangs with few speakers. Our policy so far has worked fine.
The perception that it hasn't worked derives from the fact that critics of the current policy, who have little justification for their criticism, are still very vocal.
I personally don't see what would be wrong with allowing speakers of Ebonics or Singlish their own Wikipedia, as long as we could be certain it wasn't simply desired because the parties involved wanted to be able to insert their POV into articles.
I hope that people will take this e-mail at least somewhat seriously instead of saying "We do not value anything Mark says even though others have expressed similar concerns and nothing he is saying is very outrageous".
Mark
Thank Mark for your information and your support. I know it is an uphill battle to fight for a Wikipedia in a Chinese regional speech. I expect opposition not only from Mandarin speakers who know no other regional varieties, but also from speakers of those regional varieties. Because we are taught to believe that they are substandard. That is why I use examples of Ebonics and Singlish on purpose.
What I do not expect is that Jimbo believes that the two are the *same* when written despite our effort to demonstrate their difference. If that is an issue of trust, then our effort is futile, not matter how many examples and citations we quote. I was a little disappointed when I wrote my reply but not as angry as you are. ^_^
Now I know from your examples on European languages that the similarity argument and the bilingual argument do not hold. The only difference was that there was no opposition, or that the decision makers know about those languages, but have to trust their limited sources for Chinese regional speeches.
Unfortunately the myth of Hanzi is so widespread. Why would people believe two writing systems to be the same just because they both use Hanzi? Such a claim is never found in Latin based systems. Well, perhaps if the Paupa New Guineans write "you me talk talk" instead of "yumi tok tok", that will be English.
As long as the decision is not final, and the experiment on Cantonese articles is not banned, I will continue to work on it.
Felix Wan