Wouter, I disagree. Old Saxon is, in my belief, mutually comprehensible with all other early West Germanic languages. We should thus use Common West Germanic. Though not attested, with a little effort we should be able to write in it. In fact, even writing in our native languages, we should be able to easily bridge the dialect barrier between Frisian and English and Scots and Swedish with just some orthographic conversion and a little extra effort. Obviously, the numerous Norman loanwords in English may be difficult, so I propose instead to use NoNorman when writing English, ie "firststuff" instead of "element", "birdlore" instead of "ornithology", "atomic" with "uncleftish", "beholding" rather than "theory", "manlore" (or the more PC "personlore" or "humanlore") rather than "anthropology", "animallore" rather than "zoölogy". We should also avoid indirect and idiomatic speech -- "passed away" should be instead "died", "Er wurde zu einem Bären von der Regierung aufgebunden." should be instead "Er wurde zu von der Regierung _gelogen_."
Of course, all system messages and all pages in the Wikipedia namespace would have to be written in Common West Germanic.
Mark
On 06/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow list subscribers,
After a few very nasty e-mails, overseeing the battle field, I cannot conclude but that no-one will change his view by someone else's arguments. Therefor we should not bother to meet inbetween, but rather on neutral ground: let us return to where it all begun. We can eliminate both most spelling and most dialectical differences by... returning to Old Saxon. This strong sonorous language will unite the fierce but noble people of the Saxons which have been suppressed by Francs for far too long.
Latad uns farenigan undar thia sprakô, thia lang lidan ena was. Îs, Sachson, siad fardelad thur Frankon ewan lang, enda thur hart farenigadat duvoliskit werk wîs nu siad fardelid tot op tha bena. Ni langar sallad sî uns undardrukan: Vî, dat adelt folk, gad wêrum nah unsaron brunnon en herstellad allat hwat so lang fargetan, farnederad enda undardrukad is. Lang livad Sachson, lang liva Sachsa sprako. Enda nu, makad ena nija Wikipedia for unsara gedachta utwerkon konnon!
Iar bestar friond Wouter.
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