[Wikipedia-l] The Borders of Language Variety Tolerance

[Matt McLauchlin]

I'm not sure about this 'one wiki per language.' To me, the practice seems 
to be more on the order of 'one language per written form.'

Identifying a written statement as being, say, English is much different 
from identifying a spoken statement as being English. Any speaker of English 
who can read will identify this e-mail as being written in English. An 
American (or a Briton? I can never remember which does what) might be 
somewhat surprised at the fact that I spelled "practice" in the first line 
with a penultimate C rather than S, but this will not prevent the text from 
being recognized as written English. Even if I were to throw in a bunch of 
detail about how I went to the dep for a two-four and then went and got the 
bumf for my carte-soleil, it will be recognized as written English, albeit 
with a bunch of words thrown in that they don't recognize and will have to 
have explained.

In the case of Wikipedia, an expression that gives others pause may be 
defended quite simply. For example, on the fr:wiki, someone changed my 
discussion of Montreal's "village gai" to read "village gay," which would be 
standard in France. I simply reverted the change and noted that in Canada, 
we write "gai" for this meaning, and this was relevant since we were talking 
of a Canadian toponym.

Note here that it is standard written usage that is at issue: a Quebecer who 
writes "gai" for "gay" will nevertheless not attempt to write encyclopedia 
articles as "L'Village gai c'est quet'part où on s'en va pour êt' su'l party 
pis tenter de pogner, viarge..." Non-standard written forms that attempt to 
closely mimic English speech will, paradoxically, *not be recognized as 
written English.'Fi ruyt luy hlis, it is certainly a representation of a 
form of English, but it will not be viewed as written English, and on the 
English Wikipedia will be reverted.

What does this all mean? I disagree with Mark where he says that highly 
nonstandard writing should not be reverted simply because it is English. The 
medium of en:wiki is not English meaning 'anything produced by an English 
speaker'; it is English meaning 'English written according to one of the 
prevailing standards for written English.' That's what's usually meant when 
"written English" is said. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, 
as this will be what is, in general, expected by someone who sets out to 
read something in English. His example is English, but it's not "written 
English."

If it were to be the case that some form of English were to acquire a 
written form other than standard English, such that there was a demand for a 
Wikipedia in that written form, I doubt there would be any difficulty in 
creating it. AAVE, although a highly distinctive and well-defined form of 
English, does not, in general, have a written form: a speaker of AAVE who 
wishes to write in the standard register will use standard English to do so. 
If transcribed AAVE were to come into use as a common medium of written 
exchange in the standard register, I would support an AAVE wikipedia.

I'm speaking here, by the way, of lects that are agreed upon to be 
dialects -- i.e. ones in which the speakers agree that they are speakers of 
the broader language. This doesn't apply if the speakers believe their 
language to be distinct -- AFAIK, the case of Scots -- or of independent 
languages that don't have a long-standing written form or literary 
translation and are therefore recorded as transcribed speech. In either type 
of case I would support a wikipedia.

There obviously isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. In general, though, the 
problem is self-regulating: a speaker of a dialect without an independent 
written form will generally choose to write in the standard form, or if not 
the writing will be altered to be in the standard if it cannot be defended 
contextually; and only written forms of some kind will be able to form 
independent wikipedias.

Matt 



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