Philip Newton wrote:
I believe he means something like "There is a Wikipedia in the subdomain 'minnan.wikipedia.org'. However, this 'minnan' Wikipedia does not serve the complete Southern Min family of languages that is described on [[en:min-nan]], but specifically the Taiwanese language Ho-lo-oe."
Thanks for the interpretation.
Along that line then:
I suppose that is true. Without belaboring the point I wonder how *any* written, standardized/standardizing language can do justice to the full spectrum of dialects/languages subsumed under the generic label. One could, for example, problematize the claim that the German at de.wikipedia.org serves all the linguistic varieties subsumed under that name, say Schweizerdeutsch. Yet the label is useful.
More importantly most references to Minnan do cite the Taiwanese variety as a representative of the group. The Taiwanese variety is as good as any other, with the added advantage of having a written tradition in diverse genra and plenty of Internet access for its users -- features particularly supportive of an online encyclopedia. I could go on but the discussion is probably beyond the scope of wikitech-l so I'll end here.
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