Wikipedia cracks the five-million article barrier, in English The English language version of Wikipedia has celebrated the publication of its five millionth article. The entry for Persoonia terminalis, “a shrub belonging to the family Proteaceae, which is native to eastern Australia,” went up on Sunday, November 1st at 12:27 UTC and set the confetti falling from the ceiling in the …
The sun did eventually set on the British Empire. Sorry.
I'm not American and I've generally followed British spellings and grammar. However, English is a language of change and one does not have to follow British rules in order to have good language. Let's get over it, and start to become a bit more international, shall we?
"The sun did eventually set on the British Empire."
Well, yes. Most Americans gave up speaking English by about 1783....
"Let's get over it, and start to become a bit more international, shall we?"
Let's be clear on the issue, "American English" is not the same as "English". They are welcome to call it "American", but to call it just "English language" is somewhat irritating when it clearly isn't.
Other languages have similar arguments. A German was telling me once of the awful things the Austrians do to the German language. But as far as we 'auslaender' (foreigners) are concerned it is all German.
Then there was the Brazil tour guide telling us about the Portugueses of Brazil and Portugal. It felt very like the differences between Englishes across the Atlantic.
Then there are the 57 varieties of Spanish, and of Arabic: but to outsiders they are single languages.
"Assuming "English" is "British English" is equally irritating."
No, British English is the only still existing original, and therefore requires no qualification for readers to expect "English" to mean British English.
"Here you go, the proper English version: http://h2g2.com/"
Intergalactic English is NOT proper English.
English - The most ubiquitous international language that everyone loves to hate...
The French are still upset that English became the de-facto international language.
India has its own dialect of English.
The Philippines has its own dialect of English.
South Africa has its own dialect of English.
The Japanese language now incorporates English borrowed-words for 5% and 10% of all words in common usage.
We should be glad to be the third most-spoken language in the world, and arguably the most important one. Dialects are really not to terribly important in the grand scheme of things.
http://bloggingprince.blogspot.com/2011/03/english-speaking-countries-in-world-map.html
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm
This issue was raised in the early days. If there were two English versions of each article, 99% of each pair of articles would be identical - can you imagine trying to keep them in sync with each other?
It was decided to have a single English version and to alter the spelling based on the subject of the article (e.g. the article on Winston Churchill would use International English, the article on John F Kennedy would use US English spelling). If there is no particular geographic or cultural focus to the article, it stays in the version in which it was first written. In the case of the five-millionth article, it is about an Australian shrub so it would use the International English spelling.
"If there were two English versions of each article, 99% of each pair of articles would be identical - can you imagine trying to keep them in sync with each other?"
If it were done properly, with each article having an English and an American version, It would entail lots of pointless busywork. Which is basically what most of Wikipedia is, if you think about it.
So, yes.
"If there were two English versions of each article, 99% of each pair of articles would be identical - can you imagine trying to keep them in sync with each other?"
This is already the case for every other different language version. How many are there now, more than 100?
In any case, most of the Wikipedia articles are short and cover subjects of mind-blowing triviality. Of those 5 million pages, maybe 10% are worth keeping.
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What about a Wikipedia article on how desperately those donations are needed (full page banner last I checked, followed by "snag" pop-ins on subsequent pages) so that all those programmers and, fundamentally, managers, "communication directors", and various other breed can continue their marvellous work of pushing out indispensable tools to the "community", such as the Media Viewer, Visual Editor, and of course, superprotect rights.
Without them, five million edits would not have been possible, would they?
(excuse the sarcasm)
Do the Knights who say 'Ni!' approve?
On a related note: although the Empire has ceased to be etc. as such, the sun still doesn't set on it, due to less than a handfull of tiny islands here and there around the globe.
That being said, unless it's as dead as a Norwegian Blue, every language is dynamic and constantly changeing, including english. So over time we'll probably see an 'international' version of it, and I'm okay with that.
ElReg must be turning a new leaf!
As to the accidental side-topic, if you read more than a few articles on WP you will soon see 'taint always one English but all of them. After freaking out at the mental image of a proud Indian neighborhood 'metaling' their main road, I finally tracked that down to a retained imperial usage for paving a road. Even the English don't English like they used to. They englished the ole sphere and we all are enjoying the billiards. Well, except the French.
If you filter out the articles where the author was trying to demonstrate their grasp of the subject to his/her peers rather than trying to explain it to someone trying to understand what the fuss is about*, and the articles about Pokemon, Star Trek, Star Wars and other stuff about pretend things, how many are left?
* For example the one on mechanical stress or about half the mathematical ones in which the purpose of The Encyclopedia Page Preamble was apparently lost on the writers.
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