Uhh... hello? That's what an opinion is. It means you disagree with somebody. Obviously you haven't read much of anything I've written.
Mark
On 04/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
Most of the time I prefer to avoid those hot-tempered arguments but this
time I'd like to share a few things that crossed my mind while reading the e-mails on the Dutch Low Saxon issue. I hope I can keep it reasonably short.
- Of course, Wikipedias should try to unite as many people as possible
and transcend minor variations in languages (e. g. British and American English share one Wikipedia).
- Of course, the regional variants of Low Saxon form a dialect
continuum, i. e. mutual intelligibility decreases with increasing distance.
- Of course, in linguistics national borders don't equal language
barriers.
- However, in real-life political borders in Europe have throughout the
centuries left clear marks on the way people speak and write. New words and idioms entered the dialects almost always via Standard German or Standard Dutch respectively. Whenever speakers of Low Saxon dialects write something down, they fall back on the languages they were taught writing in - that is either Dutch or German. Furthermore, all Low Saxon speakers in the Netherlands are confronted with Standard Dutch every single day while those living east of the border deal with Hochdeutsch day after day. Thus, speech varieties can and do develop separately if they're spoken 4 km apart from one another - even if that's only the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot in Arizona.
- Of course, splitting nds into Dutch and German editions will not
eliminate the difficulties a person from Pommeria will face in trying to understand the vernacular speech of someone from East Frisia. But it will reduce the overall spectrum the Low Saxon Wikipedia has to cover now.
When I first read the request for a Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia I
considered it a little far-fetched myself. But it's a matter of fact that we can't expect people from the Netherlands to adapt to the "German" lexicon and way of spelling used in nds if they want to contribute. Accordingly, any "Dutch" orthography and loan words like "pagina" or "kreeren" would simply appear strange and "foreign" to anyone living in Germany.
So I've come to the conclusion that while it might appear an
inappropriate solution from a scholarly (or ivory tower?) perspective to set up a separate Wikipedia for Low Saxon in the Netherlands, it is a very workable solution from a real world perspective.
I really do not think that this is the solution.
Will you quit? You really don't realise this is an attempt to quit this pointless discussion? Boris (was it him? I forgot) tried to come up with a consesnus and you are - again - going counter to him.
Wouter
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