On Thu, February 10, 2005 4:30 pm, Mark Williamson said:
This policy, Felix, would also disallow prestigious
languages, such as
Catalan and Frisian, which although they have many speakers are spoken
almost exclusively by bilinguals, and I would remind everybody to keep
in mind that Cantonese and Wu have far more speakers than either Catalan
or Frisian.
If you raise the similarity argument, this would be a blow against our
having separate Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu Wikipedias, against separate
Danish, Swedish, and Bokmål Wikipedias, and against separate Bosnian,
Serbian, and Croatian Wikipedias.
The difference with Singlish and Ebonics -> English and Cantonese and
Wu -> Mandarin is that there is decidedly a continuum between Singlish
and Ebonics -> "Standard" English, but not between Cantonese and Wu ->
Mandarin, and that Singlish and Ebonics have no widely agreed-upon
written form and that nobody would want to write a Singlish Wikipedia
anyways (it is very low prestige and thanks to gov't campaigning it is
regarded by most Singaporeans as poor English although experts
disagree). [an exception is that Singlish is often used in instant
messages and internet postings, but even tabloids don't use it and it
has a relatively small number of native speakers when compared to
Cantonese and Wu].
This is not to say that if somebody proposes and Ebonics or a Singlish
Wikipedia I will be totally opposed, but I do not feel that the case
is as strong as with Cantonese and Wu.
I do not see why we need a restrictive language policy when in the
past our policy has been any and all - if the speakers of a speech
variety want a separate Wikipedia, they are granted it, no matter how
similar the two are, with the general exception of conlangs with few
speakers. Our policy so far has worked fine.
The perception that it hasn't worked derives from the fact that
critics of the current policy, who have little justification for their
criticism, are still very vocal.
I personally don't see what would be wrong with allowing speakers of
Ebonics or Singlish their own Wikipedia, as long as we could be
certain it wasn't simply desired because the parties involved wanted to
be able to insert their POV into articles.
I hope that people will take this e-mail at least somewhat seriously
instead of saying "We do not value anything Mark says even though others
have expressed similar concerns and nothing he is saying is very
outrageous".
Mark
Thank Mark for your information and your support. I know it is an uphill
battle to fight for a Wikipedia in a Chinese regional speech. I expect
opposition not only from Mandarin speakers who know no other regional
varieties, but also from speakers of those regional varieties. Because
we are taught to believe that they are substandard. That is why I use
examples of Ebonics and Singlish on purpose.
What I do not expect is that Jimbo believes that the two are the *same*
when written despite our effort to demonstrate their difference. If that
is an issue of trust, then our effort is futile, not matter how many
examples and citations we quote. I was a little disappointed when I wrote
my reply but not as angry as you are. ^_^
Now I know from your examples on European languages that the similarity
argument and the bilingual argument do not hold. The only difference was
that there was no opposition, or that the decision makers know about those
languages, but have to trust their limited sources for Chinese regional
speeches.
Unfortunately the myth of Hanzi is so widespread. Why would people believe
two writing systems to be the same just because they both use Hanzi? Such
a claim is never found in Latin based systems. Well, perhaps if the Paupa
New Guineans write "you me talk talk" instead of "yumi tok tok", that
will
be English.
As long as the decision is not final, and the experiment on Cantonese
articles is not banned, I will continue to work on it.
Felix Wan