Hi,
Thanks for the replies! It is kind of true what Ron/Waerth say, there are issues with the orthography, on one of my dialect sites I use a common orthography for Low Saxon (AS; Algemene Schryvwyse), but some people in the Netherlands/Germany won't understand that, unless you tell them how it works. Dutch Low Saxon people now don't really go to the Low Saxon Wikipedia because they don't understand it and prefer to use the Dutch one instead, which is quite understandable because the Nds site looks more like German to us than Nds.
I've reconstructed the Low Saxon mainpage in my dialect for you to see how it looks and see what the problems are with it. (http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bruker:Servien/Heufdpagina).
(Mark: I've already put some articles in my dialect on the Nds.wikipedia but most people don't understand that, so that's actually a waste.)
Regards, Servien Ilaino!
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Williamson" To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for creation of Dutch-Low Saxon (nds-nl) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 22:20:35 -0700
For more on Missingsch, please see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missingsch or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missingsch
Mark
On 25/06/05, Mark Williamson wrote:
From Rohn.
And he *is* a native speaker.
Mark
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: R. F. Hahn Date: 25-Jun-2005 21:41 Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for creation of Dutch-Low
Saxon (nds-nl)
To: Mark Williamson
--- Mark Williamson wrote:
(forwarded to Reinhart (Ron) Hahn to get his opinion)
[Some basic background on the issue for Ron: As you know there
is
already a Low Saxon Wikipedia. Somebody just requested a "Dutch
Low
Saxon" Wikipedia, complaining that nds.wiki is in "German Low
Saxon".
I expressed a few concerns, not least among them that in a case
of a
dialect continuum, it will be difficult for us to decide where
to draw
lines between varieties, and which varieties should get their
own
Wikipedias.]
Concerns that nobody has responded to yet:
- As I noted before, it is a dialect continuum. Stellingwarfs
and
Middel-pommersch are surely not easily mutually intelligible,
but
Grunnegers and Oostfreesk very well should be.
- Dividing Platt along national boundaries is illogical. If we
had an
Oostfreesk Wikipedia, Grunnegers-speakers would surely
understand it
and vice-versa, even though Grunnegers is in the Netherlands
and
Oostfreesk is mostly in Germany. There are no definite borders
between
one and the next, and the national border is just as arbitrary
as any.
This would also mean that a man from the tiny village of Laar
(in
Germany) would use a different Wikipedia than a man from the
tiny
village of Gramsbergen (in the Netherlands), even though
they're about
4km (~2.5mi) apart and their speech is identical. Does this
make much
sense?
- A case of a dialect continuum is a very new thing for us. We
have no
experience with it so far, or we have crammed them all into a
single
Wikipedia.
Mark
Hi, Mark!
Thanks for forwarding this. It all makes a lot of sense to me.
I would find it very regrettable if the language were separated
along the
political border, though I know quite a few people that would
welcome it.
In the case of Low Saxon, what is at the root of the problem is orthography. In Germany it is based on German principles, in the Netherlands on Dutch principles. While most people in the
Netherlands
have some German, the Dutch-based system is quite
incomprehensible to the
majority of people in Germany. However, this is not to say that
the
German-based system ought to be used. I personally hate it for
several
reasons, and I am not alone. It is not emotional but because the
system
is very poorly suited, does not make many necessary phonemic
distinctions
and thus teaches learners faulty pronunciation, which it has done
already.
However, this is a very contentious issue, because the vast
majority of
Low Saxon speakers are older, conservative and narrow-minded,
plus
uneducated in anything linguistic, hanging on to myths and false assumption, such as orthographic standardization being designed
to
artificially created a single standard language, when
orthographic
standardization has nothing to do with language standardization,
only with
facilitating mutual reading comprehension. So we are up against a
monster
here.
It doesn't help that language competency is wanting in the
current
WikiPlatt team. Those folks are enthusiastic, and I laud that.
But they
don't know the language well enough. Much or most of it is
"Patentplatt"
(based on Missingsch), i.e. invented on the basis of German. I am
not at
all opposed to introducing technical neologisms, but there needs
to be
first of all a firm grasp of the basic language, the grammar and
the
authentic idiom.
It would be best -- if doable -- to have an international team
work on
this and use a type of compromise orthography that is easily
accessible to
all.
Thanks for your engagement in all of this.
Regards, Ron
Reinhard "Ron" F. Hahn Seattle, USA ========== I do not open unexpected or unexplained attachments. Ich öffne keine unerwarteten oder unerklärten Beilagen. Ik maak keen Bilagen apen, vun de ik niks afweten do. Ikj moak kjeene Bieloge op, von dee ikj nuscht weete do. Ik open geen bijlagen waarover ik niets weet. Ek maak geen onverwagte of onverklaarbare aanhangsels oop nie. Jeg åbner ingen uforventede bilag, såfremt der ikke er redegjort
for dem.
No abro archivos adjuntos de origen desconocido. Não abro arquivos anexados de origem desconhecida. Je n'ouvre jamais les annexes qui ne sont pas annoncées ou
décrites.
Я не открываю никакие
приложения,
о которых не знаю ничто.
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