Hoi,
I think this may be an exception to the rule that we do not accept macro
languages. This does not serve as a precedent. The rules stands and without
several strong arguments it would not even be considered
Thanks,
GerardM
On 3 February 2017 at 15:36, Oliver Stegen <[email protected]> wrote:
> I received replies from five Dinka language scholars (one of them a native
> speaker), representing DILDA (the Dinka Language Development Association),
> SIL International and the University of Edinburgh. They all unanimously
> declared that one wikipedia for ISO code [din] will be sufficient. They
> also were supportive of Prof. Myhill's efforts on behalf of the Dinka
> wikipedia and for a unified orthography.
>
> Individual reasons given included:
>
> - "To the best of my knowledge, the dialects are mutually
> intelligible."
> - "I would find it really pretty tragic if Wikipedia forced the Dinkas
> to pursue multiple written standards. With only a few million speakers in
> an unsettled political context, Dinka is going to have a hard enough time
> making a success of creating a written standard as it is; chop it up into
> four or five "languages" and you more or less guarantee that they are too
> small to have any impact. Obviously there will be lexical and grammatical
> differences in the work of different writers, but that's true of different
> varieties of English, too, without implying that we're dealing with a
> collection of separate languages."
> - "The designation of four Dinka languages reflect dialect cluster
> identities and church denominational areas where attitudes favour separate
> Bible translations, but are not highly developed identities in other ways
> (political/military). The designation of one Dinka macrolanguage
> reflects not only high overall lexical similarity (80%+) and mutual
> intelligibility (90%+) as assessed in the SIL survey (Roettger & Roettger
> 1989), but also a larger ethnolinguistic identity expressed through one
> common agreed orthography, and more recently through one language
> development association."
> - "Dinka people look to Thuɔŋjäŋ [ethnonym for Dinka language] as one
> language but not languages. Those Dinka varieties can be realized as
> dialects in a spoken language."
>
> So, I guess, that clinches it, and we can go ahead with din.wikipedia.org
> (on the condition of successfully concluding verification, of course!).
>
> Best,
> Oliver
>
> On 02-Feb-17 13:24, Oliver Stegen wrote:
>
> I know a couple of linguists working on Dinka. Bible translations are
> definitely existing or going on in different varieties but maybe, one
> wikipedia may still work. I'll keep you posted once I've heard from my
> contacts.
>
> On 29-Jan-17 06:50, Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> Oliver, I think this is your area... According to Ethnologue, Dinka
> [1] is a Nilo-Saharan "macrolanguage", with languages Northeastern
> Dinka [2], Northwestern Dinka [3], South Central Dinka [4],
> Southeastern Dinka [5] and Southwestern Dinka [6].
>
> The whole population is 1.4 million, it's about very poor South Sudan.
> Is there a sense to create one Wikipedia or to go with separate
> languages?
>
> [1] https://www.ethnologue.com/language/din
> [2] https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dip
> [3] https://www.ethnologue.com/language/diw
> [4] https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dib
> [5] https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dks
>
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