On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:03:45 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
Even though I support the creation of a Cantonese Wikipedia, I will oppose writing Cantonese in zh: for the obvious pragmatic reason: every literate Cantonese speaker can read written Mandarin (standard Chinese), but the reverse is not true. Unfair, but that is the fact of life.
My primary concern is that everyone here understand the facts before making the decision. We live in a real world. We may deny Cantonese Wikipedia due to political, public relation, or pragmatic reasons, but let's be honest and state the reason. If we pretend that it is just because the two writing systems are the same, people will come again and again to demonstrate that they are different.
The community should nurture folks starting a new Wikipedia in a different dialect/language, as long as there is a critical mass of people, articles and interface translation. Again, my main concern has always been that a wiki with one person can be a lonely place. For example around SE Asia, I've been evangelizing for the smaller Wikipedias. Some have been successful, such as Malay, but sadly others have not, like Khmer (Cambodia).
Let's reframe this discussion not as the desire to "deny" a Wikipedia, but rather a way to be good stewards of new Wikipedias and launch them in good stead. The problem I have is in language enthusiasts (ie. Mark) encouraging the creation of new Wikipedias left-and-right just to get another notch on the post without regard to sustainability. Remember this is not an either/or proposition - folks can work on zh: and work on a dialect-specific version as well.
The honest dialogue is welcome given the bizarre sensational comments such as "eventually under increasing pressure from linguistic imperialists like Andrew, local Chinese vernaculars will be gone completely."
As there are five Chinese dialects represented among my immediate relatives, I got a chuckle out of it.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)