[Gerard Meijssen ([Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
- English, American English and other orthographies are treated as
seperate entities.
I think this will be a disaster.
Can you explain why "jewellery" and "jewelry" cannot be alternatives within the one entry?
This means that all words need to exist for each orthography/dialect. On the plus side it means that descriptions like etymology and meaning will be in this one orthography as well. This is also the most easy method to provide information for a spell checker.
In what way is this easier "to provide information for a spell checker" than having spelling variants with an entry?
- We treat these variants as belonging to a specific "spelling
authority".
I wonder what a "spelling authority" would be for English.
..... It does however provide us with the possibility to be more precise in what makes English different from American, Australian etc.
It's news to me that "English [is] different from American, Australian,.." The versions of English used in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, South Africa, etc. do vary, although not to a significant extent. The spellings also differ for a very small percentage of words, and meanings differ slightly too, although this happens *within* the UK, USA, Australia, etc. too.
Only a small part of the regional variation in English can be reflected in a dictionary. Much of it is grammar, and choice of words.
Jim