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

Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com
Sun Feb 20 09:59:31 UTC 2005


If these are only phonetic differences, then how on earth is it
different from a Baihuawen equivalent of the same story?

I don't feel right now like lecturing you on linguistic human rights
(re Singlish), if it's really nessecary somebody else can jump in for
me.

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:50:26 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
> > it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
> > write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
> > go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
> > use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
> > differences
> 
> Everybody speaks English differently. Should we all "reflect extreme
> phonetic differences" rather than using proper spellings?
> 
> > I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
> > the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
> > AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
> > I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
> > Baihuawen - they are one and the same.
> 
> So now we have a person supporting Singlish Wikipedia. I think
> Wikipedia will soon grow into an encyclopedia with 1 million
> languages, rather than articles.
> 
> And anyway you cannot split between Mandarin and Baihuawen: one is
> spoken, one is written, how do you split?
> 
> > > > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> > > > maybe type some examples later.
> > >
> > > Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
> >
> > I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.
> >
> > 有一趟、北風搭太陽辣辣海爭啥人個本事大。爭法爭法來勒一個過道人、身浪穿仔一件厚袍子。伊拉兩家頭就王東道、講好啥人能夠先叫迭個過道人拿伊個夠子脫下來、就算啥人本事大。北風〓足仔勁窮吹八吹。不過吹得越結棍、埃個人拿袍子裹得越緊。後首來北風無沒勁勤、只好就算勤。過一息太陽出來一曬、埃個過道人馬上就拿袍子脫脫。所以北風勿得勿承認、還是太陽比伊本事大。
> >
> > The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
> > the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
> > Very much.
> >
> 
> You are just using "extreme phonetic differences" to express. If it is
> written in baihuawen, Shanghainese can still understand and read out
> in Shanghainese.
> 
> So now I begin to realise the difference between you and me: you think
> there is a need to set up Wikipedias to "reflect extreme phonetic
> differences" between a standard language and a not so standard spoken
> language. But I want just to have 1 Wikipedia in the standard
> language, and let the reader to read it in any different ways they
> want. To me that is the most sensible thing to do because everybody
> else do this: after all we created language to communicate, not to
> "reflect extreme phonetic differences".
> 
> formulax
>



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