Charles-H.Schulz wrote:
but the set up will take time.
Sorry to sound bothering, but I'd like to ask a rather important
question: what is the status of the controversy about the Macedonian
language (ISO code, final name, etc.)? Has it it been solved?
In the UN not yet, but majority of the world countries (over 100) has
recognized our country under the constitutional name Republic of
Macedonia, among them: USA, Russia, China, India...
NB to the list: although I don't know much about this controversy, I'll
sum it up here briefly: the name of Macedonia as a country and
Macedonian as a language is seen as problematic by some other nations,
particularly Greece, who puts forth the argument that Macedonia and
Macedonian are integral parts of the Greek culture, and as such an
independent country calling itself Macedonia is problematic for Greeks,
who besides, have an administrative province that is called Macedonia.
The whole problem is with the civil war in Greece in 1940-ties when over
300.000 Macedonians were banish from the Region called Macedonia in
North Greece (Macedonian geographical region is spread in my country
Republic of Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria, and it was divided in
Balkans Wars in the beginning of 20 century despite the will of the
Macedonian people to have it's own country), among them my grandfather
and grandmother. Now the Greece is afraid that if we are recognized in
the UN by our constitutional name, the refugees can claim the property
of the land, houses...etc which once belong to them, and now is the
property of the Greeks who came there from souther Greece. That is the
whole picture of the so called "problem with the name"
One thing leading to another, there has been an UN resolution (but here
I may be wrong) that basically requested Macedonia to change its flag
and call itself Skopje. Actually it seems that some people in Europe
call modern Macedonia "Skopje". You can hence see how we can have a
problem for the ISO code and locale.
No, our temporary name in the UN is Former Yugoslav Republic Of
Macedonia (FYROM) which is highly offensive to us. If you plan to call
our locale by this name, then I'm afraid there is no point to open any
project in native-language, as my native language is Macedonian, I'm
Macedonian and I leave in the Republic of Macedonia, and nobody can't
tell me how should I call myself. If Greece is so much in love with that
name, they should change their name in South Macedonia, right?
As for the name Skopje, it our capital city, and nobody despite Greece
is using it to address us! And about the ISO code and locale, it is
accepted as "mk" (native spelling of my country name is Makedonija) in
the ISO organization, you can check this on their web site. Also in KDE,
GNOME and all major Linux distributions our name is Macedonia, and
locale is "mk". So, after all this arguments I cannot see why there
should be any problem with the ISO code and locale.
Vladimir, I wish you nonetheless good luck for the Marathon, and look
forward to welcome you soon among our confederation.
Feel free to come back here at anytime.
Best Regards,
Charles-H. Schulz,
Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,
OpenOffice.org
I hope after the marathon you should change your opinion and the
official name of the project will be OpenOffice.org in Macedonian
language. Otherwise, as I told you above, we shall build OO by ourself
and distribute it in our country without the support of your organization.
Best regards
Vladimir Stefanov
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