[Wikitech-l] Re: Plese minnan WP move to poj.wikipedia.org

Wed Jul 7 19:01:48 UTC 2004

Philip Newton wrote:
> I believe he means something like "There is a Wikipedia in the subdomain
> 'minnan.wikipedia.org'. However, this 'minnan' Wikipedia does not serve
> the complete Southern Min family of languages that is described on
> [[en:min-nan]], but specifically the Taiwanese language Ho-lo-oe."

Thanks for the interpretation.

Along that line then:

I suppose that is true.  Without belaboring the point I wonder how *any* 
written, standardized/standardizing language can do justice to
the full spectrum of dialects/languages subsumed under the generic
label.  One could, for example, problematize the claim that the German
at de.wikipedia.org serves all the linguistic varieties subsumed under
that name, say Schweizerdeutsch.  Yet the label is useful.

More importantly most references to Minnan do cite the Taiwanese
variety as a representative of the group.  The Taiwanese variety is as
good as any other, with the added advantage of having a written
tradition in diverse genra and plenty of Internet access for its users
-- features particularly supportive of an online encyclopedia.  I could
go on but the discussion is probably beyond the scope of wikitech-l so
I'll end here.

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