This is what Mark sent to me privately.
Here's *my* attempt at coming up with a consensus:
- 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. Nevertheless, these differences may be surmountable and the issue should be explored further rather than acting rashly to create a linguistic fork.
- 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. Although it will reduce the overall spectrum the Low Saxon Wikipedia has to cover now, it won't address the other problems that are at work here, not least the fact that nds.wiki is written mostly in Missingsch.
When I first read the request for a Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia I considered it a little far-fetched myself. I still do, and so far nobody's actually crafted a logical response to my arguments other than Boris, preferring instead to discount them because I'm not a native speaker, or to repeat the same thing over and over.
So I've come to the conclusion that while it might appear to be an acceptable solution from some perspectives to set up a separate Wikipedia for Low Saxon in the Netherlands, it is not a very workable solution from a real world perspective.
Mark
I cannot understand this in any other way than: "I am right, so create no nds-nl Wikipedia". Mark you seem not to know the word "consensus". That means that two opinions meet somewhere in between, not that either party gets what it wants!
Wouter
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