[Wikipedia-l] Re: Why do we have them??

[Gerard Meijssen]

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
>> biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.
>>  
>>
> An important observation.  In Wiktionary I keep having to beat back 
> the argument that a wide assortment of  conlangs are acceptable 
> because they have been granted a code.
>
> Ec
>
Hoi,
Well actually, you are beating back the arrival of conlangs in the 
English wiktionary. It is most definetly not universally accepted that 
conlangs should not exist in a Wiktionary. When conlangs do not exist 
exept for their occurance in a Wiktionary, that is another matter.

When the spelling of words is different according to where they are 
used, the words are definitly needed in both forms and they need to be 
in a Wiktionary. Papiamento for instance has two distinct ways of 
spelling. It would be stupid NOT to have both official spellings in a 
Wiktionary. So when a language code marks a different way of pronouncing 
or a different way of spelling, it has its place in Wiktionary. In 
Wikipedia you can say things like "both can speak and read their 
versions of a language" in a Wiktionary you represent the existing 
spelling of words and you are not involved in judging if a spelling is 
political correct or not.

In Ultimate Wiktionary, we want to have it a user preference that will 
allow you to select what languages you want to add. The languages that 
will be allowed to start with will be the ones that have a language 
code. Within a language there will be room for distinct spellings. There 
will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly relevant for 
the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules that will be 
published on October 15 and will be the official spelling from August 1 
2006 onwards.

Thanks,
    GerardM