Re: [Wikipedia-l] A creole translation

Pascale, there is already available a Kweyòl Ayisyen version of Wikipedia (with 2 or 3 articles), http://ht.wikipedia.org/ At one time there was a Haitian woman working on it a little, but it's been mostly abandonned now. As for Reunionnais, I personally think that it's a good idea to have a Wikipedia in it, but I think probably we will get some objections from people who say "il n'est pa un 'lang', est soulement 'patwa'". My guess is based on the results of previous sociolingustic studies, and also the fact that when somebody mentioned "french dialect" somebody else said "There are no French dialects, except perhaps creole which can be considered a sort of dialect". Also, there is probably going to be some resistance (perhaps subconcious) because "la langue de la République est le français", and some might think people in Reunion would be served better by fr.wikipedia for 2 reasons, 1) "they should have to learn French anyways" and 2) "reunionnais is a patois" or "reunionnais is already nearly identical with French". The simple truth is that Reunionese is a language separate from French, as are Haitian, Mauritian, Seychellese, Guianese, Amapa, St Lucian, Caledonian, and Chagossian (the status of Chagos itself at the moment means that Chagossian may soon cease to exist as a language distinct from Seychellese, if Chagossians continue to not be allowed in the Chagos Archipelago and are further integrated to Seychelles society). There are entire websites written in Reunionese (Rényoné), for example http://www.renyone.com/, http://forum.europeanservers.net/cgi-bin/liste.eur?SINTOMER, http://www.temoignages.re/article.php3?id_article=3547... Mark On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:55:21 +0100, Pascale <pascale(a)rezo.net> wrote: