On 19/09/05, James R. Johnson <modean52(a)comcast.net> wrote:
But the issue is (to me, at least), that I can
understand you, even if you
spell funny (honour, colour, etc.) and have funny words (lift, pavement
instead of elevator and sidewalk). And do understand that I'm being
slightly sarcastic here, please don't rant-reply. Americans have some
spellings, English have some spellings, but we can understand each other,
except when we use our dialect-specific words. I don't really think it
appropriate to dialectualize the wikipedia unless there's mutual
unintelligibility (as in the Frisian case, I think it was).
And even with those dialect-specific words, there *are* points of
absolute mutual unintelligibility - table as a verb, what pavement is,
what a thong is - but we handle them just fine in wiki, by
common-sense disambiguation. For example -
[[Table (verb)]] discusses both instances, though I suspect we might
need to make sure that where possible we use different terminology in
actual articles.
[[Pavement]] directs to [[Pavement (disambiguation)]], which links to
both, though it's not a very clear disambig notice - if you've not
encountered the word "sidewalk" before you'd be forgiven for thinking
the UKian use would be under [[Pavement (roads)]]. Will rewrite that
later on.
[[Thong]] doesn't even bother mentioning dialects of English, just
points to various meanings.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk