[WikiEN-l] Cultural distinctions are accidental? Consensus among cultures is bad?

Sun Jun 11 23:05:34 UTC 2006

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>>Let's look at a scale
>>of cultural-dependency that Wikipedia as a whole could situate itself
>>on:
>>
>>3. Small deviations in content are allowed in the form of examples or
>>expressions. Eg, giving examples in English for "Personal pronoun" as
>>I alluded to.
>>    
>>
>I still think that example is contrived.  Some of what you're saying
>I'd say falls under "translation".  But as for actual differences in
>what constitutes a personal pronoun, as opposed to merely
>translational differences, I'd say the English Wikipedia should
>*already* cover the topic in all languages, if necessary
>disambiguating the article.
>
>In fact, we already do this to some extent.  See [[French personal
>pronouns]].  I don't think [[Personal pronoun]] would be any worse if
>it talked only about concepts that exist across languages, and linked
>to [[English personal pronouns]] for the rest.  In fact, I think it'd
>be better.
>
The difficulty with to pronouns, or pronominal adjectives is often in 
their usage.  For example, French adjectives agree with the word they 
describe, while English adjectives agree with the subject of the sentence.

    "He took his watch" = "Il a pris sa montre" - It could be his own or 
another person's, unless the context requires, "Il a fait attention."
    "He took her watch" = "Il a pris sa montre" - The translation 
remains the same.  The fact that it was a female's watch is losat.

Translating back requires a review of the context. 

To take it further, our concepts of parts of speech derive directly from 
our Indo-European (notably Latin) prejudices about language.  It is 
misleading to think that other languages would have similarly applied 
the same terms in describing their own languages.

Ec