[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia again

[Stirling Newberry]

> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 17:37:41 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
> <felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, February 17, 2005 12:30 pm, Mark Williamson said:
>>> Hi Felix,
>>>
>>> Many of the responses there anger me because they almost go so far as
>>> to say that Cantonese is worthless as a language.
>>>
>>> What about the guy who said something like "You will hardly get 50
>>> characters in without wondering why Cantonese has so much 'junks'"?
>>>
>>> Or the people who said "Cantonese should only be used for informal
>>> things." without giving a valid reason?
>>>
>> [snipped]
>>
>> That is what I have said: I expect fierce opposition from Chinese, 
>> even
>> native Cantonese speakers.  It is not easy to unlearn. ^_^  Compared 
>> to
>> those responses, people here are quite enlightened and respecting.
>>

If I may venture to speculate, it seems likely that the source of the 
Cantonese wikipedia push comes, not from the desire of a large number 
of Cantonese speakers to have Cantonese as a separate written language, 
but in a social problem involving the attitude of the writers of the 
"standard" dialect of a language towards others who use culturally 
important, but not formally approved of, versions of the language. 
People whose home dialect is close to the standard dialect often 
display this attitude, and because of the educational and professional 
incentives on the mainland, speaking the official version of the 
language - essentially a formalized version of the Beijing dialect - 
has a tremendous cultural cachet. The response is, often, for users of 
the culturally significant vernacular to declare that they are a 
separate formal language, even if this is not entirely supportable. In 
some cases this is enough to split the language, but usually it is not.

While this is not to discourage the people trying to start a cantonese 
wikipedia, it suggests that even if it works, it does not address the 
root problem of a cultural/language clash involving usage on the 
chinese wikipedia. This would indicate, therefore, that regardless of 
the outcome of the cantonese wikipedia, that some measures should be 
taken to reduce the strain on the chinese wikipedia in some fashion.

Perhaps this will make people reconsider my call for dialectical 
support in wikipedia - where people can choose not only their own 
language, but the dialect of it, and it would be possible to add markup 
information which would allow for differences in what is displayed 
based on dialect of the viewer. I feel that in the case of cantonese, 
this ability would be sufficient to reach a resolution - where 
cantonese speakers could enrich the content of the chinese wikipedia 
with cantonese native words and usage, without triggering the ire of 
the beijing dialect users.