To convince the ISO 639 RA that Western Armenian was different from Eastern Armenian, I did not write a series of anecdotes making claims and saying “I can provide info if you want”. I worked with linguistic experts and produced a document demonstrating clearly the genuine linguistic differences.
No such document has ever been produced for Montenegrin. Michael > On 5 Mar 2018, at 23:25, Steven White <koala19...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Forwarded from on-wiki. It was posted there on Friday 2 March at about 18:30 > UTC. > > “Dear LangCom members, > > I am writing to you with intention to clarify some things regarding the > Montenegrin Wikipedia project. I am aware that there is a lack of support for > this project to be allowed, and the main argument is that it is a “variety” > of Serbian language, claimed even by some members here. I’d like to remind > you that not a single serious institution claims this to be true, they all > list it as a member of Serbo-Croatian macro language, not a part of Serbian > (an important distinction). > > Next, some question the use of two added letters all while claiming that they > can simply be replaced with sj, zj. As per Montenegrin orthography, this is > not true, I can explain everything in detail on the discussion page for > anyone interested in this, please, be free to ping me there. And on the same > page plenty of examples have been given to show how these letters are in fact > used. Also, alongside a few other users, I have shown some clear differences > between Ijekavian Serbian and Montenegrin (let me remind you that ~90% of > articles in Serbian Wikipedia are written in Ekavian standard, not > Ijekavian). The most important feature of Montenegrin is jekavian iotation, > not present in any other SC language, and this means that it is impossible to > follow Montenegrin standard if we were to write Serbian (or Bosnian, > Croatian) Wikipedia. > > And let’s not forget the reason that most members here wish to ignore, but > sadly, due to historical and political reasons, cannot. Serious NPOV > violations are present on Serbian Wikipedia on literally every article > regarding Montenegro (and lots of other political, historical topics related > to other countries and people but it is not relevant to Montenegrin Wikipedia > right now). I have listed quite a few examples of that in discussion page and > even some of reverting changes that were made to regain NPOV, ping me for all > of that as well if you cannot find it on that cluttered page. Politics do in > fact play a big part in all of this, and explain why Montenegrin community > is, besides all the reasons listed above, also uninterested to contribute to > such projects, and there is a clear intention to write neutral articles > retaining NPOV among our community, not to create propaganda-style articles > that can sadly be found on all of these other projects. > > Some propose using Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. The very existence of it is > harshly criticized amongst most of Serbian, Croatian community, as they find > it unnecessary and are often feeling angry at SC community merely copying > their articles, as claimed by some users. I won’t argue about necessity of SC > Wikipedia, but I felt that this is a good introduction for my main reason why > Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is not a good solution for Montenegrin either. > > Very large number of articles have parts directly copied from Serbian, > Croatian, Bosnian Wikipedias, resulting in a huge mess on articles, with a > single sentence being written half in Croatian, half in Serbian, which is > utterly confusing for the reader, switching between dialects, word forms, > grammar rules etc. In the discussion page I’ve shown how different a > Montenegrin Wikipedia article would be from an article in Serbo-Croatian to > Mr Amir Aharoni, please, be free to check that as well, and I can do that for > any article you want me to, so you have a side by side comparison, just like > the one I made there. A very large number of Croatian words is unheard of and > unknown in Montenegrin, to the point where you simply cannot understand > whatever you are reading about (scientific topics to the point of > unintelligiblity!). And Croatian is vastly dominant in Serbo-Croatian > Wikipedia (alongside those Ekavian Serbian parts in the middle of a single > sentence). You can agree that this is not a good ground for developing a > serious project written in Montenegrin language. > > Finally, I am aware that these other projects are grandfathered, but it > doesn’t change the fact that they do exist, and Montenegrin community sees > this as very unfair (to say the least) and really feels that based an all of > the things listed above, and this fact that it’s the only SC variety without > it’s own Wikipedia, it does deserve creation of it’s own project. > > Sincerely, Luka (Wiki username: Lujki).” > > > Sent from Outlook > _______________________________________________ > Langcom mailing list > Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom _______________________________________________ Langcom mailing list Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom
