Hi,
Maybe somebody here will have an idea about this problematic issue.
See this discussion:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116761
(Click "Show older changes" to see all the comments.)
Briefly, the name of the Central Kurdish language (code ckb) is currently
shown as "کوردیی ناوەندی". If I understand correctly, this may be a correct
translation of "Central Kurdish" into Central Kurdish, but at least some
speakers don't like it. The people who edit the Wikipedia in question are
asking for "کوردی", which is just "Kurdi".
It does appear as the autonym in CLDR,[1] but CLDR is not necessarily a
reliable source.
The name in CLDR in some other languages is something like "Kurdi Sorani",
and it's also mentioned in Ethnologue as one of the possible autonyms.
Furthermore, some of the people who participate in the discussion at
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116761 are not opposed to calling it
"Kurdi Sorani", but others are loudly demanding only "کوردی".
My own consideration for being reluctant about calling it only "کوردی" is
that there is another Wikipedia in a Kurdish language, with the code ku.
(Arguably, it should be changed to kmr, but that's a topic for another
discussion.) That language's name is written as "Kurdi". Both of these
languages can be written in the Latin and in the Arabic alphabet, although
ku is more commonly written in Latin and ckb is more commonly written in
Arabic. Having two languages with the same name—albeit in a different
script—may be confusing and misleading for a reader who needs to choose.
That's why labeling ckb as "کوردی سۆرانی" ("Kurdi Sorani") looks
like the
safest option to me, but not everybody there agrees with this.
One of the most interesting comments[2] on the discussion about changing
the name gives several examples of other websites, which use "کوردی" and
"Kurdi" in the language selector, and says that the Latin-script name
points to what would be "ku" in Wikipedia, and the Arabic-script name
points to what would be "ckb". I don't know any Kurdish language, but I do
know the Arabic alphabet, and the texts in these websites do seem different
enough, and not just the same language in different alphabets. Furthermore,
at least one of them tags the versions as ckb and ku using the HTML lang
attribute. If this is indeed a practice on several other websites in these
languages, then I _guess_ I'll be OK with doing it on Wikipedia as well,
but I decided to try to run this by the Language committee first, just in
case.
Does any of you have an opinion about this?
Thanks!
[1]
http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/31/by_type/locale_display_names.language…
[2]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T116761#3387578
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore