[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

[Jack & Naree]

Yes, it was me, I did rant, I do apologise, but I'm just pissed off with 
proper English being treated like this.
You have Wikipedia in Klingon, in tiny tribal languages, and now in Scots 
(and I'm Scottish btw) - which is basically as similar to correct English as 
American-English is - at least I think most native English-speakers can 
probably read it.
 "- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
useful insight into our language policy :-)"
 Why not? Ok, I ranted, but this not an illegitimate point, why should we 
(and I say that because you have a ".uk" address) be forced to accept 
Americanisms?
If you're British, do think we should start changing our spellings to 
American ones? Start changing our grammar too?
 someone at Wikipedia ages ago wrote to me that he thought it was fine for 
articles in the English section to remain in the dialect relevent to their 
subject matter - he basically said, if it's about the UK it can be in 
English, but everything else is to be in American-English, but called 
English - and he said he was British!
 I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation 
(because of the many differences in American-English and English usage), and 
English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans - why 
is it wrong to resist that?
  On 19/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 19/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does your e-mail have a point?
> 
> I would guess this is the same person who ranted at the en: Help Desk
> yesterday about the issue.
> 
> As this rant included (edited highlights) -
> 
> "It's bad enough that the British invention of HTML won't let you type
> colour correctly in tags, without having the world's largest free
> online dictionary purporting to display information in English, but in
> fact displaying it in a dialect of English - we've got Wikipedia in
> Scots, Wikipedia in Middle English, but when you click on Wikipedia
> English, you get spelling errors, sloppy grammar and garbled syntax;
> in short the American dialect of English, trying to hijack the term
> English. ... I want Wikipedia "English" to be partitioned in to
> "English" and "American". We can copy and paste and run spellcheck to
> iron out the mangled American illiteracy, no worries. ... It is a
> scandal to actively promote the butchering of English..."
> 
> 
> 
> --
> - Andrew Gray
> andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
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