One more thing to consider: Glottolog has a separate entry for Montenegrin Standard,
parallel to, so not the same as Bosnian Standard, Croatian Standard, and Serbian
Standard.
mvh. K
________________________________
From: Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby(a)gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2023 3:32 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Langcom] Re: Montenegrin - ineligible?
Montenegrin is probably the longest-standing issue we have in the language committee, and
it has been requested numerous times through the years. In the beginning of the language
committee, the nation of Montenegro itself was brand new, and Montenegrin had already been
"lumped in" with Serbian for a long time (well, at least since the
Serbo-Croatian code was split up).
For a number of years, and this may be why LangCom's stance on Montenegrin has been
the same, Montenegrin simply didn't meet one of the formal criteria: having an ISO 639
code. Then, in 2017, the language finally got its own code, but there was skepticism
within the committee because the code was an ISO 639-2 code and not an ISO 639-3 code. The
registrar for ISO 639-2 is the US Library of Congress, while the registrar for ISO 639-3
is SIL International. For all their faults, the latter is at least perceived to be more
linguistic-minded, but many people saw the code coming to ISO 639-2 first as a sign that
this was a politically motivated decision, and not a linguistically motivated one. A
single language (and not a language group/macrolanguage) having a code in ISO 639-2 and
not in ISO 639-3 was a highly unusual situation.
However, it seems to me that the code was also added to ISO 639-3 later without much
fanfare, though there isn't the usual paper trail on the ISO website:
https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/cnr
I have dug up previous discussions from the mailing lists that I would advice all language
committee members to read through. Most of them are on the internal list, because the
discussions happened before we reached consensus to have a public list. That means they
are not available to external list observers, but committee members should have access. If
you don't, reach out to me off-list, and I will help guide you through the process.
1. April 2007: The thread "Incubator and conditional
approvals<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@l…/>".
It is a very long thread, the parts most relevant for Montenegrin happen in mails 2–8, but
the rest can be an interesting read too if you want more context.
2. March 2010: A single email "Request for Wikipedia in
Montenegrin<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal…
from our now-former member, User:Millosh, who is himself Serbian and therefore knows the
local situation quite well.
3. December 2010: The thread "Montenegrin Wikipedia
rejected<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@li…/>";
it was rejected because a pending request to add an ISO 639-3 code for Montenegrin was
rejected (or not acted upon?) by the registering authority.
4. May 2011: The thread "Montenegrin
4<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wik…/>";
rejected because of continued lack of ISO 639 code.
5. Also May 2011: The thread "orthographies and
macro-languages<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-inte…/>",
giving some details about the relationship of the various Serbo-Croatian languages.
6. July 2011: Parts of the thread "Eligible status for Wikipedia in Tunisian
Arabic<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@list…/>",
which went a bit off that topic.
7. March 2017: The thread "Rejection of Wikipedia
Prekmurian<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wik…/>",
with more details.
8. December 2017: The thread "Montenegrin Wikipedia
(
URGENT)<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikime…/>",
which came after the ISO 639-2 code was approved, but before it was added to ISO 639-3.
And then there's the current thread.
As we can see, I don't think there was ever a clear consensus to outright reject
Montenegrin. There was a consensus for many years to wait until they potentially got an
ISO 639 code, but when that finally happened, it happened in what I would describe as an
"out-of-process way", which seemed perhaps "suspicious" on linguistic
grounds.
ons. 26. apr. 2023 kl. 13:28 skrev Kimberli Mäkäräinen
<kimberli.makarainen@tuni.fi<mailto:kimberli.makarainen@tuni.fi>>:
I think it would be a good idea to look more into this, preferably by asking linguists
specializing in this language/these languages for their opinion. Having an ISO code is not
a guarantee one way or another that they are separate languages and there are plenty of
languages bundled under a single ISO code.
mvh. K
________________________________
From: Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com<mailto:jhsoby@gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 4:55 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
<langcom@lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Langcom] Re: Montenegrin - ineligible?
Thanks for bringing it up, Amir. I promised a user a while
back<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by#Mont…
to bring up the Montenegrin issue again, but I haven't done anything about it yet.
The last proper discussion we had about Montenegrin in this list was in this
thread<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikimed…
from March 2018 (+ this
reply<https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikimedi…
from Steven). Since then the language committee's composition has changed a bit, but I
don't know if the situation wrt. Montenegrin recognition has changed – back then, the
ISO 639-2 code for Montenegrin was quite new. But it could be good to hear some more
opinions from within the committee before it's marked as ineligible again.
tir. 25. apr. 2023 kl. 14:53 skrev MF-Warburg
<mfwarburg@googlemail.com<mailto:mfwarburg@googlemail.com>>:
I agree.
Amir E. Aharoni
<amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il<mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>> schrieb am
Di., 25. Apr. 2023, 14:26:
Hi,
There's this old, contentious discussion:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Monten…
I somehow thought that it's already marked as ineligible, but it isn't. I'd
say that it should be marked as such. I've allowed localization in that language on
translatewiki, similarly to en-gb, de-ch, etc., but it doesn't seem distinct enough
for a whole Wikipedia.
Does anyone disagree? If not, I'll be bold and mark it as ineligible in a week.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
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Jon Harald Søby
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Jon Harald Søby