[Wikipedia-l] Propose to set up a Cantonese Wikipedia

Fri Jan 14 17:10:08 UTC 2005

Hello there (to David Chang and other proponents speaking Cantonese mostly),

After the détente of these days (the main focus has seemed to be drawn 
to the main page of Wikipedia...) --- and I have read most of the 
discussions exchanged here --- I wonder if you guys are considering how 
to build up this Cantonese version. Do you have some clear plans of 
which pages to be written in the first place, and how many committed 
contributors are there going to be in the beginning? I'm asking this 
just being conserning, because although there has been numerous messages 
for or against its establishment, I myself would quite support it. I 
think that except discussing about "yes, we need it" or "no, it's 
abundant", maybe some concrete plan is desirable? How are you going to 
write Cantonese, by which romanization program(s); autoconversion 
mechanism needed or not; totally with hanzi or a mix-up with roman 
letters? I'm fond of encouraging producing texts of knowledge in 
"dialects" (to me, they're really languages unintelligeable with others 
just as fit as Catalàn is), and hoping that maybe following Cantonese 
version, there would be a Hakka version (which is spoken by 12% of the 
population, but quite needs promoting in Taiwan). So I care much about 
how your issue is ongoing here:)

P. S. This is my first time using this mailing list system, and any 
toleration of my unintended mistakes is pleaded.

Sincerely,

Hrodeberht von MilchFlasche.