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

[Mark Williamson]

Oh, and I think there won't be 1 million Wikipedias.

Most dialects, or closely intelligible varieties, are 100% happy
sharing the Wikipedia. So far nobody has requested a Singlish
Wikipedia, so it isn't even a case to consider.

If a native speaker requests a Wikipedia in what is not considered by
all to be an independent language, some criteria should be considered:

1. Does ANYBODY (not the majority, just anybody) write in the
dialect/language often, ie beyond SMS and such?
2. What is mutual intelligibility of it and existing Wikipedia's
language, when written?
3. Is there any desire, among even a small community, for some small
seperation in literature?

Ethnologue considers Voro to be a dialect of Estonian, as do many
linguists. But the mutual intelligibility with standard Estonian when
written is not above 90% (I don't believe), many people write in Voro,
and it has entirely separate literature.

Platt is perhaps more comparable here. It was similarly said then,
that standard German text can be read as regional pronunciation. But
it meets these 3 criteria: Quite a few people (not the majority
though) write often in Platt; when written its mutual intelligibility
is below 90%, and there is some desires for a separate literature
which is already emerging.

This case is similar here. I estimate pure written Cantonese at
between 70 and 89% intelligibility with Guanhua-Baihuawen depending on
specific instance (maybe 85% on average). This is /casual/ mutual
intelligibility, that you can read it without having to stop over and
over to guess what words might mean. I'm much less sure about Wu but I
think it is in the same range, especially when etymologically correct
hanzi are used rather than using etymologically incorrect hanzi for
their Baihuawen meaning. (the hanzi that means "run" in Minnan for
example, means "walk" in Baihuawen, but often it is used for "walk" in
Minnan because of uneducation of etymology)

It makes no sense regularly to say "Bite is", but "m-sik" is Cantonese
for "isn't" and the way it is written means "bite is" in
Baihuawen/Mandarin which is the same.

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
>