[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

[Sheng Jiong]

> Are there
> schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to
> standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
> in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
> notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
> research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
> one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. 

A very good point indeed. And I also agree with Andrew's view, that
Wikipedia's chief aim is to write encyclopedias, not promoting any
kind of promoting of languages. If any Chinese dialects any other than
Mandarin has received significant attention in the world, and that
people have gotten used to writing/reading these languages, there is
of course a need to set up a Wikipedia in this language. But the truth
is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language,
and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects. In
fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should
there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.

And to Mark: please do note that I speak Shanghainese rather than
Min-nan. Therefore among those opposers there is also a native speaker
of the language. It is not as you wrote that only those who do not
speak the language oppose the proposal. I am still strongly opposed to
the set up of any Chinese dialect Wikipedias. And I am not actually
glad to see the Min-nan Wikipedia too. I simply doubt if any Min-nan
speakers can understand the current Min-nan Wikipedia.

[[User:Formulax]]