On 13/07/05, Heiko Evermann heiko.evermann@gmx.de wrote:
Hi Mark,
After much thought, I have had a change-of-heart regarding separate Wikipedias for Low Saxon.
That is a surprise.
HOWEVER, I still believe it is wrong to divide on national borders. From what I can tell, Stellingwarfs, Grunnegers, Dreents, Tweants, and Achterhooks are all different enough from one another to warrant separate Wikipedias.
The national border is a border of spelling.
Servien claims that the national border is entirely based on vocabulary. If it is, however, based as you say on spelling, then it can easily be remedied by a converter between Netherlands and Germany spelling, similar to the converter used at the Chinese and now the Serbian Wikipedias (similar converters are tested for Kashmiri, Low Saxon, and even English right now).
Sample:
Stellingwarfs: Et doempien hadde zien nust in et waegenhokke. Op een keer weren beide oolden uutvleugen. Ze hadden eten haelen wild veur de jongen en hadden de jonkies hielendal allienig laoten. Grunnegers: t Was ain van de schierste zummers sinds joaren. n Steltje keudeldoemkes haren heur nust baauwd in de woagenschure stoef achter de baanderdeure. Op n dag sluigen baaide ollen de vleugels uut. Ze wollen veur de jongen wat te bikseln hoalen en luiten doarom de lutjen hailendaal allind achter.
...
Well, these different texts are not direct translations of each other. There is a lot of paraphrasing in them.
While this is certainly true, if one looks at individual words, you can see apparent differences (the words for "[he] said", are one example).
I was unable to find a better sample; however it became rapidly clear that they're different.
The main question here is: how different are theses 5 dialects of Low Saxon from each other from their own perspective. In other words: I think it is up to those people from this area to just tell us what they want. My guess is that they will feel that they can work together in one wikipedia. After all they did not ask for 5 new wikipedias, but just for one.
Each of these websites refers to its dialect/language as a language. Cf "drentsetaol", etc. The publishing of separate translations of both religious (the Bible) and secular (Asterix) literature indicates that there are indeed significant differences.
In addition, there was only one requester for this Wikipedia. As far as I know, none of the supporters speak Low Saxon, or if they do they are not from the Netherlands (for example you and Slomox are from Germany).
I suspect that if people from the websites I linked in a previous message were to see this discussion, they would jump on Servien's message and request instead separate Wikipedias.
And, unlike him, these organisations are founded and maintained by native speakers, which as far as I know are a bit more abundant in the Netherlands than in Germany (in the Netherlands, they are closer to Dutch which is more closely related to Low Saxon than German is, so some speak of "diglossia" rather than "bilingualism", similar to how true Japanese dialects are strong still but the Okinawan language is in poor health because it is not mutually understandable with Tokyo Japanese).
...
Current policy, so far, has been to wait for native speakers before starting a new Wikipedia. This is not a written policy, but it seems to be the case as there was created Voro, Scots, Kapampangan, and Cebuano Wikipedias, where native speakers were involved, but not Sranang Tongo or Papiamentu, where there was a lot of support but no native speakers.
Best wishes; Mark