[Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for classical Chinese

[Adam Bishop]

>From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for classical Chinese
>Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2005 18:57:52 -0500
>
>Adam Bishop wrote:
>
>>On the Latin Wikipedia I think we try to be as classical as
>>possible - the style of Cicero, or Caesar, or Vergil, or that sort
>>of era (1st century BC - 1st century AD).  It's not always
>>possible; for example if we want to write about modern people or
>>places, we may have to use a neo-Latin construction, or
>>ecclesiastical Latin to write about a religious topic.
>>(Personally, I admit that I let a few medieval Latin constructions
>>slip through once in awhile, as horrible as that may be to the
>>purest classicists :))
>
>As compared to historical Latin works, the Latin Wikipedia seems to
>use *much* simpler sentence structures and grammatical constructions
>and so on, which to some extent also minimizes the differences
>between different eras of Latin.  Is that on purpose?  If so, is
>that something that'd be applicable to a classical-Chinese
>Wikipedia?
>
>-Mark
>
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It's not on purpose in the sense that we are consciously making a "simple 
Latin" wikipedia, but everyone writes according to their own level of 
comprehension - there are many excellent Latinists there (I am not one of 
them!), but of course there are no native Latin speakers, either to write in 
more complicated Latin or to correct what we write.

Adam