Mailing List Archive

Anthere wrote:
> Hello
>
> Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
> whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
> Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
>
>
>
As an outsider to this argument, I know little other than what I have
read on the mailing list and in articles, so I apologise in advance for
any inaccuracies, but I think it goes something like this:

To a close approximation, Moldovan == Romanian, but written in Cyrillic,
and is used in Moldova and Transnistria, which border Romania, and are
closely historically and culturally related. There are considerably
fewer mo: speakers (3.4 M in Rep. Moldova, 0.5M in Transnistria) than
ro: speakers (24 M).

See [[Moldovan language]] for details.

However: Romanians have had an unhappy history with all things Russian
(see [[History of Romania]]) and the historically-recent carving up of
the [[Principality of Moldavia]], and many feel _very_ strongly, for
political, historical, and cultural reasons that they don't want to have
_anything_ to do with the use of Cyrillic to write Romanian, to the
point that they took the Cyrillic character off the Wikipedia globe in
the logo for the ro: Wikipedia.

This is a _major_ nationalist issue for many Romanians. So, politics and
script system appear to be very tightly coupled.

There only seem to be three practical ways forward:

1 Maintain the status quo, and don't create an mo: Wikipedia

2 Create a separate mo: Wikipedia in Cyrillic, effectively duplicating
the ro: Wikipedia in a different script.

3 Two front ends, one database. Add dual-script interface support to the
ro: Wikipedia, but: unlike with the zh: Wikipedia, a dual-script
interface within a single domain will _not_ appeal to those who are
against having even a single Cyrillic letter on the logo, so there will
have to be two domains, ro: and mo:, the former with a Latin-only
interface and article display, and the latter with either Cyrillic-only
or dual-script support, both using the same back-end database, which
must, I believe, remain entirely Latin-based for technical, historical,
and diplomatic reasons.

My personal preference is option 3, since option 1 disenfranchises
almost 4 million people, and option 2 effectively forks the ro:
Wikipedia, and will in any case most likely simply be filled up with
machine-transliterated articles from ro:

However, to implement option 3, there will need to be not only a lot of
consensus-building, but also the implementation of a reliable,
round-trippable, Latin <-> Cyrillic transliteration system for
Romanian, which does not yet exist. There are several options which are
_nearly_ workable, but work would be needed to make this happen, and
would require expertise from both the mo: and ro: communities.

Whichever option you choose, you will make some people _very_ unhappy.

-- Neil

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Anthere schreef:
> Hello
>
> Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
> whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
> Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
Hoi,
As I can not edit on the Moldovan, the Romanian or any of the Balkan
Wikipedias but as I do have an interest in languages and as I have spend
a considerable amount of time trying to understand what the issues are.
I am happy to oblige.

As a language Moldovan is considered by linguists to be the same as
Romanian. The Romanian language is written in the Latin script. In the
days of the USSR, Moldova used to be a USSR republic and has since
become an independent nation. However, a small part, Transnistria, broke
away from Moldova and declared itself independent in 1990. There has
been a war between Moldova and Transnistria until a cease fire was
reached in 1992. Forces of the 18th Russian army fought on the side of
Transnistria.

Transnistria uses the Cyrillic script, Moldova the Latin script and as
part of the conflict, they both declared the use of script used by the
others illegal. The Wikipedia articles says: "The problem of the
official language in the MSSR <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSSR> had
become a Gordian knot <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot>, being
exaggerated and, perhaps, intentionally politicized. Some described the
language laws as "discriminatory" and criticized their rapid
implementation. Others, on the contrary, complained the laws were not
followed."

The problem for wikipedia is that we suffer the brunt of extremists of
both sides. People who will do whatever to keep their project alive and
people who will do whatever to kill off the http://mo.wikipedia.org The
mo.wikipedia is traumatised by a lack of admins fighting spam and
vandalism and of vilification of people who want to create a project
that is in Cyrillic.

The mo.wikipedia can not at present function normally; their main page
stigmatises the effort and has people go to the http://ro.wikipedia.org.
There are people of other Wikipedia projects that vandalise each other
projects in the name of their "good" cause. Given that Wikipedia stands
for a Neutral Point Of View these people are all horribly wrong and
given these actions they cannot be trusted to bring a NPOV in their own
language either.

From a language point of view, it would be best to come to one project,
a project where the Moldovan orthography both in the Latin and the
Cyrillic script is accepted. It is extremely likely that both a Moldovan
orthography and a Cyrillic script for this language will be supported by
the ISO in the future. Imho it will need a roadmap with clear
deliverables to both parties to come to such a situation.

Thanks,
GerardM

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Transnistria
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Neil Harris wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Hello
>>
>>Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
>>whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
>>Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>>
>>Thanks
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>As an outsider to this argument, I know little other than what I have
>read on the mailing list and in articles, so I apologise in advance for
>any inaccuracies, but I think it goes something like this:
>
>To a close approximation, Moldovan == Romanian, but written in Cyrillic,
>and is used in Moldova and Transnistria, which border Romania, and are
>closely historically and culturally related. There are considerably
>fewer mo: speakers (3.4 M in Rep. Moldova, 0.5M in Transnistria) than
>ro: speakers (24 M).
>
>See [[Moldovan language]] for details.
>
>

As far I understand: Moldovan is written in Cyrillic only in
Transnistria, while the rest of Moldova switched to the Latin script
after gaining independence from the USSR; the Moldovan government states
that the official language is called Moldovan, and it's the same
language both in Moldova and Transnistria. Therefore, most of the
Moldovan-speaking people have used Latin script for at least 15 years.
For this reason, they don't think it is correct that the wikipedia
called Moldovan uses Cyrillic. I understand they are ok to say Moldovan
and Rumanian are the same language.

Marco (Cruccone)
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Marco Chiesa wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>> As an outsider to this argument, I know little other than what I have
>> read on the mailing list and in articles, so I apologise in advance for
>> any inaccuracies, but I think it goes something like this:
>>
>> To a close approximation, Moldovan == Romanian, but written in Cyrillic,
>> and is used in Moldova and Transnistria, which border Romania, and are
>> closely historically and culturally related. There are considerably
>> fewer mo: speakers (3.4 M in Rep. Moldova, 0.5M in Transnistria) than
>> ro: speakers (24 M).
>>
>> See [[Moldovan language]] for details.
>>
>>
>>
>
> As far I understand: Moldovan is written in Cyrillic only in
> Transnistria, while the rest of Moldova switched to the Latin script
> after gaining independence from the USSR; the Moldovan government states
> that the official language is called Moldovan, and it's the same
> language both in Moldova and Transnistria. Therefore, most of the
> Moldovan-speaking people have used Latin script for at least 15 years.
> For this reason, they don't think it is correct that the wikipedia
> called Moldovan uses Cyrillic. I understand they are ok to say Moldovan
> and Rumanian are the same language.
>
>
>

Yes, I'd forgotten that the Moldovans shifted back to the Latin
alphabet. In which case, I can refine the suggestion a bit:

ro: and mo: should then share databases, and an auto-transliterating
dual-script front end as in zh:, but the Cyrillic part of the interface
should be disabled completely whenever accessed via the ro: domain name.
Even when accessed via mo:, it should always default to the Latin
alphabet (thus making the 27M Latin-script-using Moldovans and Romanians
happier), at the cost of making the 0.5M Transnistrians, and a small
minority of older Cyrillic-script-using Moldovans, slightly less happy
than they would have been otherwise.

A possible spin on this approach: by getting the Transnistrians to share
the same back-end DB, you could argue to nationalist Romanians that the
Transnistrians are thus being drawn into the wider Romanian-language
cultural sphere, whilst at the same time you could argue to nationalist
Transnistrians that their own language/writing system combination is
being given first-class support, without having the Latin script forced
on them... so everybody's happy. Or am I being hopelessly unrealistic?
(Yes. Of course I am.)

Do we have any actual Romanians, Moldovans or Transnistrians on this
list who can give an opinion on this?

-- Neil

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