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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Stellingwerfs

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Stellingwerfs Wikipedia

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submitted verification final decision
  This proposal has been closed as part of a reform of the request process.
This request has not necessarily been rejected, and new requests are welcome. This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

This discussion was created before the implementation of the Language proposal policy, and it is incompatible with the policy. Please open a new proposal in the format this page has been converted to (see the instructions). Do not copy discussion wholesale, although you are free to link to it or summarise it (feel free to copy your own comments over). —{admin} Pathoschild 02:03:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Proposal summary
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  • Relevant info: Stellingwerfs is spoke in the Stellingwerver region of Overijssel province in the netherlands. Stellingwerfs is mainly spoken in the municipalities Weststellingwerf and Ooststellingwerf of the Dutch province Friesland. It is one of the non Frisian-speaking areas in Friesland.
  • Locations spoken: Stellingwerver region of Overijssel South-east Friesland and some neighbouring parts of Overijssel and Drenthe.
  • Closely related languages: Drents, Overijssels, Gronings
    • I recommend that you avoid this Balkanization, dear anonymous user; not any regional variant of Low Saxon has to get a Wikipedia on its own! Caesarion 07:42, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I support this request, to some extent. I am against balkanisation, but as I see it there are several factors lined up in support of separate Wikipedias for the different Lowlands Saxon languages in the Netherlands:
  1. They are quite frequently referred to as languages in their own right by native speakers, cf "stellingwerver tael" or "grunnegers sproake".
  2. They are sufficiently different that Servien made the self-servien comment on the article about Zeeuws, "de inhoudt lykt eerlik eseit meer op Seeuws dan op Nedersaksich", which if my Veluws is up to date is a remark that the page looks more like it's in Zeeuws than Lowlands Saxon...
  3. Ethnologue has them as separate languages.
  4. They have separate bible translations. There are also separate translations of Asterix for each one, and there is also a small body of other separately-translated literature (such as The Little Prince)
  5. They each have established orthographies, and the established orthographies are sharply different to one another. I'm afraid that in a unified nds-nl Wikipedia, Servien would scare people off by making them write in his preferred (ie, Veluws-based) spelling. He already showed evidence of this towards the anonymous contributor: "Disse spellingswyse kump nie overeen mit de spellingswyse die an-eraojen is, dit kan tot preblemen lyden in de toekomst."
  6. The main issue here seems to be one of number of speakers in proportion to a separate Wikipedia. However, it should also be considered that the Netherlands is now a very connected nation, and you can find many promoters of Gronings, Stellingwarfs, Achterhoeks, Drents, Twents, etc. on the Internet -- in fact, there are websites for organisations promoting the languages.
  7. We have separate Wikipedias for Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian, despite the fact that they are much more similar than Veluws and Gronings.
  8. So far, we have only had input from two native speakers of Lowlands Saxon varieties in the Netherlands: Servien, and an anonymous user. I propose that we hold off on the issue until we can get the opinions of more native speakers of the interested varieties.
    • Node ue 16:29, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Just to be sure, Servien is not writing bad Veluws: there is not one Veluws regional language. The language he uses is West-Veluws, Dutchbiblebeltish, which is indeed more Franconian in character than East-Veluws. Caesarion 22:23, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        • Indeed -- I do not have a problem with the quality of his Veluws, just that he seeks to force all people to use his preferred orthography and suppress opposing opinions (see his recent actions on this page. --Node ue
          • Hi, I don't mean to make people use my writing system, the writing system is negotiable, but I suggested it as a temporary writing system untill some others contribute some messages saying what they'd like as standerd. I used this writing system of Low Saxon because in the current version of Messenger Plus it is written in this writing system aswell and is understandable to most people, unlike the writing system that the anonymous user used on the "seperate LS dialects" test-Wiki, besides if they see the writing system used on the Grunnings page, they'll want to request a new Wiki for the same dialect in another writing system, especially since none of the Grunnings dialects even use a similar writing system to that one used on the page which is supposedly written in Grunnings (see Streektaal.net ...the writing system on this page is the closest to the standerd-Grunnings used.) That's why I proposed one writing system and not 16 different ones, which don't even have a Low Saxon-look. It is true I speak West-Veluws, I understand East-Veluws very well because the difference IMO is not that big. (The dialect I use is from the area of Nunspeet and Putten) Servien 10:13, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I support a wikipedia for Stellingwarf. The reason why I do is that I am of the opinion that any language with a respectable presence in Wiktionary deserves this. I have been given permission to include the Stellingwerf dictionary that will be available as an stl-nl dictionary in Wiktionary. People are actively working on content in Stellingwarf. When the people behind this request are associated with the people currently translating the bible, I will be very happy to support it. GerardM 11:01, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have contact with the proposer? It would be good to know what their level of support is and how many people might be involved. And do you know other native speakers who would be interested in supporting such a project? I see no reason why Stellingwerfs and other regional languages in the Netherlands shouldn't, in due course, have their own wikipedias, if there are people interested in working on them. --Chamdarae 12:11, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt if the writer of this proposal has ever been in Weststellingwerf or Ooststellingwerf, two municipalities in the province Friesland which form the mainpart of the area where this language (or dialect) is spoken. I have lived there in a village for some years. So, what he/she writes: Stellingwerfs is spoken in the Stellingwerver region of Overijssel province in the netherlands is completely not true. It is mainly spoken in this southern part of Friesland and a little bit in some municipalities in the provinces Overijssel and Drenthe across the border of Friesland. JePe 12:57, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have my doubts about splitting Low Saxon in tens of regional variaties; the language is already small (see nds Wikipedia). It's true that regional variations are an obstacle, but splitting it up won't help to improve the situation. DanielM 07:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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