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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If I'm the one who doesn't know what consensus means, then what's up with your "Boris (was it him? I forgot) tried to come up with a consesnus and you are - again - going counter to him"?
That was the whole point of my private message to you: sarcasm.
What Boris said was his view, not an attempt at a consensus. It was also a persuasive argument for his viewpoint. However, I am not obliged to change my views just because of what Boris has said; nor are you obliged to change your views because of what I have said.
The only way to resolve such a conflict is to respond point-by-point and elaborate on our opinions with examples, analogies, and the like. Of course, this doesn't always work, but it would certainly be better than the responses I've gotten so far. Boris' message is only a starting-point for a real, constructive dialogue, not the end.
You don't need to worry that a long discussion could hold up the creation of a new Wikipedia because it will probably take a while anyways.
None of your responses to my points have been real rebuttals, and you haven't responded on a point-by-point like Boris did. You've basically just said "well, that may be true, but they're still too different to use a single Wikipedia" (this is not, I repeat _not_ a real quote), Walter has basically just said "people have already responded to your arguments, and anyways you're not a native speaker so if 5 native speakers think they need a separate Wikipedia, you must be wrong" (not a real quote, but his position largely ignores the position of R. F. Hahn who, although not an active member of the Wikipedia community, is a native speaker of LS and is very knowledgable about it and other Lowlands languages), and Servien has actually crafted some good responses but it would be much easier to follow if he responded to each point separately, as did Boris. However, some of Servien's statements are contradictory -- he says that border varieties are very similar, but later he says "Scots [...] is way closer to English than DLS to GLS", which although not *directly* contradictory is really contradictory by example.
Re what other people have said about Scots: Scots and English have an absolute boundary. Although it's not a strong boundary (there are transitional dialects), it is definite nonetheless. Also, there are only two standards for the modern languages descended from Anglo-Saxon, and from each of them there is a more or less sufficient degree of intelligibility to all dialects in written form, with some exceptions (Shetlandic and Orcadian Scots are not easily mutually intelligible with "Standard Scots").
Differences between Nynorsk and Bokmål can be exaggerated or minimised depending on choice of words and grammatical constructions. Ultimately, though, they are both recognised as separate official varieties of the same language, rather than as parts of a dialect continuum divided by national borders.
Mark
On 04/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
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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Dear fellow list subscribers,
After a few very nasty e-mails, overseeing the battle field, I cannot conclude but that no-one will change his view by someone else's arguments. Therefor we should not bother to meet inbetween, but rather on neutral ground: let us return to where it all begun. We can eliminate both most spelling and most dialectical differences by... returning to Old Saxon. This strong sonorous language will unite the fierce but noble people of the Saxons which have been suppressed by Francs for far too long.
Latad uns farenigan undar thia sprakô, thia lang lidan ena was. Îs, Sachson, siad fardelad thur Frankon ewan lang, enda thur hart farenigadat duvoliskit werk wîs nu siad fardelid tot op tha bena. Ni langar sallad sî uns undardrukan: Vî, dat adelt folk, gad wêrum nah unsaron brunnon en herstellad allat hwat so lang fargetan, farnederad enda undardrukad is. Lang livad Sachson, lang liva Sachsa sprako. Enda nu, makad ena nija Wikipedia for unsara gedachta utwerkon konnon!
Iar bestar friond Wouter.
_________________________________________________________________ Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
Wouter, I disagree. Old Saxon is, in my belief, mutually comprehensible with all other early West Germanic languages. We should thus use Common West Germanic. Though not attested, with a little effort we should be able to write in it. In fact, even writing in our native languages, we should be able to easily bridge the dialect barrier between Frisian and English and Scots and Swedish with just some orthographic conversion and a little extra effort. Obviously, the numerous Norman loanwords in English may be difficult, so I propose instead to use NoNorman when writing English, ie "firststuff" instead of "element", "birdlore" instead of "ornithology", "atomic" with "uncleftish", "beholding" rather than "theory", "manlore" (or the more PC "personlore" or "humanlore") rather than "anthropology", "animallore" rather than "zoölogy". We should also avoid indirect and idiomatic speech -- "passed away" should be instead "died", "Er wurde zu einem Bären von der Regierung aufgebunden." should be instead "Er wurde zu von der Regierung _gelogen_."
Of course, all system messages and all pages in the Wikipedia namespace would have to be written in Common West Germanic.
Mark
On 06/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow list subscribers,
After a few very nasty e-mails, overseeing the battle field, I cannot conclude but that no-one will change his view by someone else's arguments. Therefor we should not bother to meet inbetween, but rather on neutral ground: let us return to where it all begun. We can eliminate both most spelling and most dialectical differences by... returning to Old Saxon. This strong sonorous language will unite the fierce but noble people of the Saxons which have been suppressed by Francs for far too long.
Latad uns farenigan undar thia sprakô, thia lang lidan ena was. Îs, Sachson, siad fardelad thur Frankon ewan lang, enda thur hart farenigadat duvoliskit werk wîs nu siad fardelid tot op tha bena. Ni langar sallad sî uns undardrukan: Vî, dat adelt folk, gad wêrum nah unsaron brunnon en herstellad allat hwat so lang fargetan, farnederad enda undardrukad is. Lang livad Sachson, lang liva Sachsa sprako. Enda nu, makad ena nija Wikipedia for unsara gedachta utwerkon konnon!
Iar bestar friond Wouter.
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
Oops. Make that "Ihm wurde auf einem Bären von der Regierung gebundet" and "Ihm wurde eine Lüge von der Regierung erzählt".
Mark
On 06/07/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Wouter, I disagree. Old Saxon is, in my belief, mutually comprehensible with all other early West Germanic languages. We should thus use Common West Germanic. Though not attested, with a little effort we should be able to write in it. In fact, even writing in our native languages, we should be able to easily bridge the dialect barrier between Frisian and English and Scots and Swedish with just some orthographic conversion and a little extra effort. Obviously, the numerous Norman loanwords in English may be difficult, so I propose instead to use NoNorman when writing English, ie "firststuff" instead of "element", "birdlore" instead of "ornithology", "atomic" with "uncleftish", "beholding" rather than "theory", "manlore" (or the more PC "personlore" or "humanlore") rather than "anthropology", "animallore" rather than "zoölogy". We should also avoid indirect and idiomatic speech -- "passed away" should be instead "died", "Er wurde zu einem Bären von der Regierung aufgebunden." should be instead "Er wurde zu von der Regierung _gelogen_."
Of course, all system messages and all pages in the Wikipedia namespace would have to be written in Common West Germanic.
Mark
On 06/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow list subscribers,
After a few very nasty e-mails, overseeing the battle field, I cannot conclude but that no-one will change his view by someone else's arguments. Therefor we should not bother to meet inbetween, but rather on neutral ground: let us return to where it all begun. We can eliminate both most spelling and most dialectical differences by... returning to Old Saxon. This strong sonorous language will unite the fierce but noble people of the Saxons which have been suppressed by Francs for far too long.
Latad uns farenigan undar thia sprakô, thia lang lidan ena was. Îs, Sachson, siad fardelad thur Frankon ewan lang, enda thur hart farenigadat duvoliskit werk wîs nu siad fardelid tot op tha bena. Ni langar sallad sî uns undardrukan: Vî, dat adelt folk, gad wêrum nah unsaron brunnon en herstellad allat hwat so lang fargetan, farnederad enda undardrukad is. Lang livad Sachson, lang liva Sachsa sprako. Enda nu, makad ena nija Wikipedia for unsara gedachta utwerkon konnon!
Iar bestar friond Wouter.
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
Now you're just talking mierda! Why would anyone wan't to use a language that's dead! :s of course Old LS would be kind of cool, but no one would use it. (must admit I understand this text better than I'd probably understand it in New GLS haha) but if you are going to talk bout stuff like this then why just not delete all Wikipedia's and start a complete new one in the language of Pagaea! :p
Servien
2005/7/7, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Oops. Make that "Ihm wurde auf einem Bären von der Regierung gebundet" and "Ihm wurde eine Lüge von der Regierung erzählt".
Mark
On 06/07/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Wouter, I disagree. Old Saxon is, in my belief, mutually comprehensible with all other early West Germanic languages. We should thus use Common West Germanic. Though not attested, with a little effort we should be able to write in it. In fact, even writing in our native languages, we should be able to easily bridge the dialect barrier between Frisian and English and Scots and Swedish with just some orthographic conversion and a little extra effort. Obviously, the numerous Norman loanwords in English may be difficult, so I propose instead to use NoNorman when writing English, ie "firststuff" instead of "element", "birdlore" instead of "ornithology", "atomic" with "uncleftish", "beholding" rather than "theory", "manlore" (or the more PC "personlore" or "humanlore") rather than "anthropology", "animallore" rather than "zoölogy". We should also avoid indirect and idiomatic speech -- "passed away" should be instead "died", "Er wurde zu einem Bären von der Regierung aufgebunden." should be instead "Er wurde zu von der Regierung _gelogen_."
Of course, all system messages and all pages in the Wikipedia namespace would have to be written in Common West Germanic.
Mark
On 06/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow list subscribers,
After a few very nasty e-mails, overseeing the battle field, I cannot conclude but that no-one will change his view by someone else's arguments. Therefor we should not bother to meet inbetween, but rather on neutral ground: let us return to where it all begun. We can eliminate both most spelling and most dialectical differences by... returning to Old Saxon. This strong sonorous language will unite the fierce but noble people of the Saxons which have been suppressed by Francs for far too long.
Latad uns farenigan undar thia sprakô, thia lang lidan ena was. Îs, Sachson, siad fardelad thur Frankon ewan lang, enda thur hart farenigadat duvoliskit werk wîs nu siad fardelid tot op tha bena. Ni langar sallad sî uns undardrukan: Vî, dat adelt folk, gad wêrum nah unsaron brunnon en herstellad allat hwat so lang fargetan, farnederad enda undardrukad is. Lang livad Sachson, lang liva Sachsa sprako. Enda nu, makad ena nija Wikipedia for unsara gedachta utwerkon konnon!
Iar bestar friond Wouter.
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Unfortunately, Servien, the current consensus among linguists is that a protolanguage from more than 5000 years ago is difficult to reconstruct, and from over 10000 years is entirely impossible.
Thus, at best, we'd be able to have Proto-Indo-Finnic (?... that's provided that, as many have hypothesised and even "proven", Finno-Ugric is demonstrably the closest relative of Indo-European), but certainly not Pangaean.
Mark
On 07/07/05, Servien Ilaino servien@gmail.com wrote:
Now you're just talking mierda! Why would anyone wan't to use a language that's dead! :s of course Old LS would be kind of cool, but no one would use it. (must admit I understand this text better than I'd probably understand it in New GLS haha) but if you are going to talk bout stuff like this then why just not delete all Wikipedia's and start a complete new one in the language of Pagaea! :p
Servien
2005/7/7, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Oops. Make that "Ihm wurde auf einem Bären von der Regierung gebundet" and "Ihm wurde eine Lüge von der Regierung erzählt".
Mark
On 06/07/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Wouter, I disagree. Old Saxon is, in my belief, mutually comprehensible with all other early West Germanic languages. We should thus use Common West Germanic. Though not attested, with a little effort we should be able to write in it. In fact, even writing in our native languages, we should be able to easily bridge the dialect barrier between Frisian and English and Scots and Swedish with just some orthographic conversion and a little extra effort. Obviously, the numerous Norman loanwords in English may be difficult, so I propose instead to use NoNorman when writing English, ie "firststuff" instead of "element", "birdlore" instead of "ornithology", "atomic" with "uncleftish", "beholding" rather than "theory", "manlore" (or the more PC "personlore" or "humanlore") rather than "anthropology", "animallore" rather than "zoölogy". We should also avoid indirect and idiomatic speech -- "passed away" should be instead "died", "Er wurde zu einem Bären von der Regierung aufgebunden." should be instead "Er wurde zu von der Regierung _gelogen_."
Of course, all system messages and all pages in the Wikipedia namespace would have to be written in Common West Germanic.
Mark
On 06/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow list subscribers,
After a few very nasty e-mails, overseeing the battle field, I cannot conclude but that no-one will change his view by someone else's arguments. Therefor we should not bother to meet inbetween, but rather on neutral ground: let us return to where it all begun. We can eliminate both most spelling and most dialectical differences by... returning to Old Saxon. This strong sonorous language will unite the fierce but noble people of the Saxons which have been suppressed by Francs for far too long.
Latad uns farenigan undar thia sprakô, thia lang lidan ena was. Îs, Sachson, siad fardelad thur Frankon ewan lang, enda thur hart farenigadat duvoliskit werk wîs nu siad fardelid tot op tha bena. Ni langar sallad sî uns undardrukan: Vî, dat adelt folk, gad wêrum nah unsaron brunnon en herstellad allat hwat so lang fargetan, farnederad enda undardrukad is. Lang livad Sachson, lang liva Sachsa sprako. Enda nu, makad ena nija Wikipedia for unsara gedachta utwerkon konnon!
Iar bestar friond Wouter.
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
-- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
From: Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
Wouter, I disagree. Old Saxon is, in my belief, mutually comprehensible with all other early West Germanic languages. We should thus use Common West Germanic. Though not attested, with a little effort we should be able to write in it.
Old Low West Germanic, bien entendu. Old High German /is/ attested and quite different. I could contribute in Old Maastrichtian, attested in the Wachtendonck Psalms. We could thus join the request for a Wikipedia in Old Norse, reinforce the dormant Gothic one and work together with the Anglo-Saxon edition. When all this succeeds, and other projects like Old Irish, Troubadourish (Middle Provençal), Vulgar Latin, Church Slavonic, Old Greek (Homeric? Classical? Koine?) etc. Wikipedias are created in the mean time, we can request a PIE Wikipedia, reconstructing the language by what is known and enhancing it with adapted borrowings from Classical and modern languages. That's what i call back to your roots!
Wouter
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