> Joost Andrae wrote: > > Hi, > > > > the entry "Macedonian" on the page > > http://download.openoffice.org/other.html is used as language entry. > > It's not used as a country name. > > The reason why Sophie has sent this to this list obviously is that > people are very picky about these things and it would be good for our > project to stay out of any politically motivated discussions and just > only use descriptions that are widely accepted. > > Can we clarify this by asking someone from the Native Language > Community? Does a "Macedonian" language exist and is this the correct > term to describe this language?
The Macedonian *language* certainly does exist, just as Serbian and Croatian are now regarded as separate languages. The three languages are related, Macedonian having a strong Greek influence. Macedonian uses the Cyrillic script (as does Serbia), so localisation is quite essential. However, the *country* named "Macedonia" is in dispute (and has been since the former Jugoslavia disintegrated. There is a part of Greece which is called Macedonia, as well as the former part of the former Republic of Jugoslavia. Historically, it was Alexander of Macedonia who first united the various city- states of what we now know as Greece, hence the Greek outrage at the naming of the former Slavic republic. Perhaps the individuals like the OP could be appeased by making certain that the references make clear that the project is concerned *only* with the *language*, and that the relevant project has nothing to do with political divisions (unfortunately, I feel that even that is unlikely to mollify some). > > Regards, > Mathias -- Alex Fisher Co-Lead, CD-ROM Project OpenOffice.org Marketing Community Contact Australia/New Zealand http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
