From: Boris Lohnzweiger <BorisLohnzweiger(a)web.de> Most of the time I prefer to avoid those hot-tempered arguments but this time I'd like to share a few things that crossed my mind while reading the e-mails on the Dutch Low Saxon issue. I hope I can keep it reasonably short. 1. 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). 2. Of course, the regional variants of Low Saxon form a dialect continuum, i. e. mutual intelligibility decreases with increasing distance. 3. Of course, in linguistics national borders don't equal language barriers. 4. 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. Thus, speech varieties can and do develop separately if they're spoken 4 km apart from one another - even if that's only the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot in Arizona. 5. 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. But it will reduce the overall spectrum the Low Saxon Wikipedia has to cover now. When I first read the request for a Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia I considered it a little far-fetched myself. But it's a matter of fact that we can't expect people from the Netherlands to adapt to the "German" lexicon and way of spelling used in nds if they want to contribute. Accordingly, any "Dutch" orthography and loan words like "pagina" or "kreeren" would simply appear strange and "foreign" to anyone living in Germany. So I've come to the conclusion that while it might appear an inappropriate solution from a scholarly (or ivory tower?) perspective to set up a separate Wikipedia for Low Saxon in the Netherlands, it is a very workable solution from a real world perspective. Boris P. S. In German, the idiom goes "Auf einem hohen Ross reiten" wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org schrieb am 03.07.05 20:41:12: Mark, do you know what you are doing? Do you know the Dutch expressions "hoog van de toren blazen" and "een grote bek opzetten"? You can freely translate them into "rydelling". That is what you do. You contribute a lot of useful, constructive things, but yet you make yourself fall in disgrace with mingling in anything, persisting in your own position and addressing people hostilly. And the difference with Rydel is that he only does so in things concerning Belarus and Belarusian (or however you want to spell it), and you do so in all topics concerning languages. I must admit, however, that as far as I know you never scolded people for nazi or stalinist. Wouter _________________________________________________________________ MSN Webmessenger overal en altijd beschikbaar http://webmessenger.msn.com/ _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l _________________________________________________________________________ Mit der Gruppen-SMS von WEB.DE FreeMail können Sie eine SMS an alle Freunde gleichzeitig schicken: http://freemail.web.de/features/?mc=021179 _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l