Help talk:Jumiekan Patwa spelling policy

I do not think that it is a good idea to diverge from the standard orthography. I just published a very fine translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Jamaican Creole, translated by Tamirand De Lisser. In it, epenthetic h- is not italicized (and that practice is not preserved in plain text anyway), and "Jamiekan" is used, not "Jumiekan". I think certainly that "Jamiekan" should be preferred. Evertype (talk)‎ 08:19, 23 Mie 2016 (EST)

It is a challenge to write down a hitherto oral language, for which there is no standard orthography, made more difficult by different registers of speech. In the continuum that is Jamaican speech the name of the country ranges from Jamaica > Jamieka > Jomieka > Jumieka, representing shifts from acrolect through mesolect to basilect. Your preference is clearly mesolectal whereas we have chosen the basilectal form. The italicization of the epenthetic h, a distinctive feature of basilectal JC inherited from 18th century London English, is a nod to that particularity. --Yocahuna (talk)‎ 11:01, 23 Mie 2016 (EST)

I am a linguist and understand what you are saying about standardization and register, but I don't understand how you have made this choice. If you search Jamiekan, the "standard" spelling, you get over 100,000 hits on Google and fewer than 2000 for Jumiekan. The New Testament uses the "Jamiekan" spelling, as does (as I said) the new translation of Alis Advencha ina Wandalan. As to epenthetic h, of course I know where it comes from. In fact De Lisser made use of it for one of the characters in Alis, where Carroll made use of dialect in his original. Nevertheless, I think that 1) if you are going to write h-, write h-; using italics is confusing and unsightly and 2) using that particular dialect option widely makes it difficult to search not only article titles but content—particularly as the standard writes Ingglish not hIngglish for instance.

Really, I really don't understand why that one not-very-comprehensive web page should be the normative spelling for this Wiki rather than sticking to Cassidy's which seems to be more regular and more inclusive. Moreover, that seems to be what is to be taught in the schools. Differing from that does not seem to me to be wise. As a member of LangCom, which recently approved this Wiki, I am sorry I did not notice this previously; I would have flagged it for serious discussion. I think that there should be a community discussion about this now. How many editors are participating? Evertype (talk)‎ 12:59, 24 Mie 2016 (EST)

I have to say that we have few editors, and some of them once the Wiki was approved I presume they decided to take some "wikibreak" due to the great effort we did in the last months. Regarding the orthographic issue, I can see a point in both arguments, and both of you are free to choose one variant or the other, as there is no official orthographic convention for Jamaican. --Katxis (talk)‎ 15:20, 24 Mie 2016 (EST)

"Officialness" and "solid standardization" are different things. The alterations to the Cassidy orthography (epenthetic h for instance) seem to push the orthography towards eye-dialect rather than away from it. One of the reasons I'm uncomfortable with this is that you haven't given complete freedom—it specifies that you think people should use Cassidy plus a set of not-very-well-defined (or not very well justified) alterations to it. Why ‹Jumiekan›? That should have an [ʊ] in the first syllable, and the typical pronunciation is [ə], which is better represented by the ‹a› in ‹Jamiekan›, which is also the etymological spelling and more user-friendly. And as I pointed out, The spelling with ‹u› is found almost nowhere via a simple Google search.

The other reason I'm uncomfortable with this is the fact that I just published a book which will be going into the schools, and I found the orthography which we used simple and easy to read—and when I read articles on this Wiki, I find that it is not only not the same but so different that the orthography here is more an impediment. This "acrolect" ~ "mesolect" ~ "basilect" business? Well, it's not user-friendly, unless all the users are really well up on their dialectology. I'm not so up on my dialectology and when I found Post-creole_continuum#Stratification it certainly did not help me evaluate either the Jamaican Alice or a number of the pages on this Wiki. The "Help Page" here states that people should "keep in mind the preservation of the post-creole continuum"—who the heck knows what that is, or how to do it? Do you expect Jamaican editors to be dialectologists?

I really think it would be better to stick to the Cassidy orthography unless there are very good reasons to differ. I believe that De Lisser did so because she is tuned in to what may well be going into the schools. She and I have discussed future projects which involve education through —it is disheartening to see the Jamaican Wikipedia differ so hugely from the orthography she will use.

At the very least the Elp Piej needs to be re-written to be user friendly to every editor. And to give the rules for the Cassidy orthography. But when I compare gyal in Alis with gial in this unattributed Jumieka-spelling, I fear that the policy you have adopted will work against the Wiki and the language rather than for it.

I don't say anything here in order to anger or upset anyone. I have been long involved in matters of orthographic standardization for Cornish, though, and have published Alice in many dialect versions (German, French, English, Scots). I would like to see this Wiki succeed, but right now it seems to me to be really headed in the wrong direction. I wish I had known this when I had a look a few weeks ago before it was formally approved. Evertype (talk)‎ 09:18, 25 Mie 2016 (EST)

Further: In my own work as a linguist I have often encountered the question of register. Never this acro/meso/basi continuum. But why have you gone for "basilect"? Is an encyclopaedia not intended to be somewhat formal and precise in its diction? I looked through Alice, too, and I don't see any particular kowtowing to standard English there. Where is it written on this acro/meso/basi continuum? I can't tell. Nor do I see how orthography rather than word-choice is necessarily the right place for trying to pin down a question of register. Evertype (talk)‎ 09:31, 25 Mie 2016 (EST)

I would like to thank you for your comments, as we have a small community an every comment that can make us improve is welcomed. As I have previously stated, you (or any other user) are free to choose another orthographic system different from the one used here the reason being that there is no official one. --Katxis (talk)‎ 15:12, 25 Mie 2016 (EST)

@User:Evertype, if you wish to see a more standardised spelling policy for Jumiekan Patwa, you could feel free to create an online English --> Jumiekan Patwa transliterator (along the lines of this english to scottish transliteration tool). This would ensure a more standardised spelling because newcomers could then check to see if their spelling has 'deviated' or is different from what is used here. Of course, you may need to add up to 3,000 - 7,000 words into that transliterator in order to take into account most of the vocabulary used in this Wikipedia version. What does this idea sound to you? --Philip J (talk)‎ 02:59, 26 Mie 2016 (EST)

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