Delirium wrote:
Delirium wrote:
You seem to be arguing a cultural relativist position, which I think frankly is nonsense, even if it sometimes is popular in "critical theory" academic circles.
To expand on this, I think that every language's viewpoint should bridge *all* cultures, to the extent possible, not just all cultures that speak that language.
I agree, but that doesn't mean cultural influence doesn't infiltrate the articles in interesting ways. I've been reading Wolfram's History of the Goths lately, and he uses Ulfila's Gothic version of the Bible to acquire cultural insights, for instance by comparing words that can be translated directly, suggesting concepts integral to the culture, vs loan-words for "foreign" things, like palm trees.
The production of an encyclopedia is more of an un-self-conscious effort of using the language in a normal way. I've heard that the Hopi language doesn't have the usual concept of past and present; if so, Hopi-language articles on physics could be much more revealing than the traditional interviewing by academic linguists.
We can only get this kind of benefit from the participation of multiple native speakers, so I think it's reasonable to set that as a criterion for creation.
Stan