It's not clear at all. Depends upon who you ask. It's a typical language-dialect problem. 

I do know that, the Saraiki community in Pakistan has also been demanding a separate Saraikistan. So, for the community it's pretty much a separate language.

If you are asking my opinion then even Punjabi and Western Punjabi Wikipedias should have been one Wikipedia with two scripts (maybe a third script as well). Even Hindi-Urdu for that matter. It's always the socio-political reasons.

As per Wikipedia:

Saraiki was considered a dialect of Punjabi by most British colonial administrators,[29] and is still seen as such by many Punjabis.[30] Saraikis, however, consider it a language in its own right[31] and see the use of the term "dialect" as stigmatising.[32] A language movement was started in the 1960s to standardise a script and promote the language.[20][33]

Best
Satdeep

On Mon, 21 Oct, 2019, 9:20 AM MF-Warburg, <mfwarburg@googlemail.com> wrote:
> While there may be a close similarity to Western Punjabi, I agree with Steven's point that the right time to bring that issue up would have been when we decided whether to mark the language as eligible. We did mark it as eligible (by Satdeep just over 2 years ago), and that has to mean something. To walk back on that now, after volunteers have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working on it, is just not ok.

I disagree with this notion.
One of the tasks of the Language Committee is precisely to prevent new "Serbo-Croation" cases from happening. It has been suggested that this might be such a case here. So let us please discuss this issue and clear it up. I have done some reading and it seems to me that there might be enough differences between Saraiki and Western Punjabi anyway. But Satdeep brought up that that might not be the case, and on the request page there are also people who says that it's not a separate language (while others, of course, say the opposite).
I just would like this to be clarified in order not to have a situation in several years where everyone acknowledges that it is most unfortunate that there are several wikis...

(It is also a matter of fact that languages get marked as eligible all the time without a discussion, just because the majority of cases don't turn out to be problematic at all. I looked at the archives and saw that back then, Satdeep said on this list "There is some controversy regarding this but according to my analysis, it should be eligible." - That does not directly contradict his statement "Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki." from 8 October, but I still would love to have the whole thing clarified as requested on 16 Oct.
Back in 2017, Oliver Stegen said in reply to the mentioned mail: "Any controversies may come to ight and be discussed accordingly during the verification phase which has started now." and I agree with this; a random marking as eligible should not prevent a discussion about what the situation really is.)
[Mails from 29 + 30 August 2017]


Am So., 20. Okt. 2019 um 05:30 Uhr schrieb Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>:
I finally heard back from the first person [1] I emailed now, and he basically echoed what Satdeep said: All pages he checked, except the one I mentioned in the first email, are in Saraiki.

While there may be a close similarity to Western Punjabi, I agree with Steven's point that the right time to bring that issue up would have been when we decided whether to mark the language as eligible. We did mark it as eligible (by Satdeep just over 2 years ago), and that has to mean something. To walk back on that now, after volunteers have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working on it, is just not ok.

Therefore I would like to officially propose that we approve the Saraiki Wikipedia, as they meet all of our criteria.

[1] I'll be happy to disclose his name and details on the private list if anyone on the committee wants me to, but I don't want to do so here on the public list since I never brought that up with him.

ons. 16. okt. 2019 kl. 18:04 skrev Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>:
I have not gotten a reply yet. Yesterday I emailed to more people from Pakistani universities with Saraiki departments, but no reply from any if them yet either.

ons. 16. okt. 2019, 16:29 skrev Steven White <koala19890@hotmail.com>:
Have we heard from the expert yet?

On a related subject:  Do we have any Wiktionary experts here?  Saraiki Wiktionary is also now approvable in theory (assuming that the language issue on the Wikipedia clears). My concern about the Saraiki Wiktionary is only that compared to a lot of Wiktionary projects, this one appears pretty basic to me: just a straight Saraiki dictionary, with little in the way of bells and whistles (pronunciation, translations to other languages, etc.). But that's just based on the gross appearance of pages, as I do not read Saraiki (or any other language written in Perso-Arabic script). So Satdeep and anyone else: Does the content look ok? Are there greater expectations of what a Wiktionary should contain—expectations we have not communicated, I will add—or is this project appropriate and acceptable?

Steven

Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom <langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2019 3:38 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki
 
I am still waiting to hear back from the expert. If he says the rest of the pages look fine, then I think we can move forward – Steven makes some good points as usual.

tor. 10. okt. 2019 kl. 21:03 skrev Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>:
Hoi,
The final stage is that we verify if the language it is said to be. When we find it is not or are not certain we have all the room to seek another authority to move forward. At this stage it becomes confusing and I am not convinced at all that we should.
Thanks,
        GerardM

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 19:21, Steven White <koala19890@hotmail.com> wrote:
This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we need to move forward with this.

Steven

Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom <langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 4:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki
 
...

As for the Western Punjabi/Saraiki issue, I don't know enough about that to have any opinion either way.

tir. 8. okt. 2019 kl. 19:00 skrev Satdeep Gill <satdeepgill@gmail.com>:
...

P.S. Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki.

Regards
Satdeep Gill


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