Greetings,

[Sabine Cretella ([Wiktionary-l] languages that do not have "correct spelling" standards) writes:]

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I take this theme up since it is not only a Ultimate Wiktionary problem ... it is an actual problem for many minor languages.

When there are several possibilities to write a word within a language these should be treated on an equal level. No-one may ever discriminate one of the possible spellings.

I think this goes to the heart of the issue, and I totally agree with you.

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The important thing is that if these different spellings can be attributed to a ceratain "branch" it should be done. Those who cannot be classified just receive the general language classification.

Hear, hear.

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Anyway: I am a translator for EN-DE and IT-DE now we have a pretty weird situation with German. There was a spelling reform that in a first place was adopted by all federal states and this year in autumn the new spelling should have become the only valid one... now in Germany these decisions are not taken centrally by the federal government in Berlin, but by the ministries for education and culture of the single federal states. Some of these federal states, among them Bavaria, will not accept the deadline of this year in autumn, but accept old and new writing. It is a funny situation for my job, since it could mean that a customer tells you that he wants the old spelling or the new spelling depending on where he lives and what he prefers or in most cases they will not even bother how things are written, since many don't even know the new spelling rules ... it is really a strange situation: imagine someone in Bavaria translates a text - legally he/she may use whatever ortography he/she likes - if the customer lives in a state where the old ortography is not valid anymore this can lead to a bad surprise.

And in many countries there is no concept of a "correct" spelling or orthgraphy, and there would be outrage if an education ministry tried to enforce one. In Australia, for example, we generally use "British" spellings (of which there can be more than one for words such as recognize/recognise), but a few words sometimes take the "American" spelling. This is just a matter of usage. The main dictionary published here (Macquarie) records what is used, but makes no attempt to define what is correct. In Japan the education ministry issues advisories on matters such as which kanji should be used, or which portions of a word should be in kana, but the actual usage is varied and accepted. In fact, writers often adopt their own styles on this matter. (The big "Daijirin" dictionary published by Sanseido has "ikebana" written four different ways within the one entry.)

With my Japanese-English dictionary I get occasional requests that I mark the English translational equivalents according to where that form of word is used. In fact it is very difficult to do so. While there are indeed two broad groupings in English spelling, when you get to the detailed level you can almost never say spelling X is only used in country Y, or in country A spelling B is the only one used.

Cheers

Jim