[Foundation-l] Re: A proposal for new language creation

Fri Nov 25 16:15:16 UTC 2005

>I don't think we're talking about an interlegibility criterion here, at

>least that's not how I understand Jimbo's proposal. Certainly nobody 
>objects to separate wikis for the Scandinavian languages. The issue is 
>not whether native speakers of one language can read material in another
>language. It's whether there are native speakers who actually read and 
>write in this as a literary language at all, as opposed to reading and 
>writing in some "other" language of which theirs is merely a dialect.

The criterion of Jimbo is not incorrect. Some philology use the same criterion
to distinguish tongues between dialects.

>
>Expanding on Jimbo's point, here's the problem with dialect Wikipedias 
>(leaving aside, for a moment, the thorny problem of deciding whether 
>something is a dialect or a language). Dialects tend to be in a similar

>position to constructed languages, in that they have no pre-existing 
>literature and their orthography has to be invented to a significant 
>degree. When the standards these establish are missing, we really have 
>no factual basis from which to write in such a language. Inventing 
>spelling or grammar while you write the encyclopedia, just like 
>inventing facts while you write the encyclopedia, is perpetrating an 
>intellectual fraud and a hoax.

This is not correct: same tongues can became dialects. The sicilian for example
had a very important literature with Frederick II, Duke of Swabia. Also the
occitanic at moment is not used in literature, or in law courts, or in officials
circumstances. 

It's wright that a dialect became tongue where it enriches with "registers",
but a tongue can become dialects when it loses them.

Ilario