It's not irrelevant because if approved, it could be added to list of pending name changes.
As far as codes representing macrolanguages, ku: is clearly a different situation than ar.wp. Arabic is a group of languages with a single unifying "macro" standard, which speakers of all Arabic languages learn in school. Every speaker of any Arabic language - Iraqi, Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan, etc. - will readily agree that Modern Standard Arabic is part of their cultural and linguistic tradition. For this reason, the situation makes sense.
This is decidedly not the case with ku. Unlike with ar.wp, there are 5 different languages with more or less equal status. There is no "Modern Standard Kurdish". Imagine if Modern Standard Arabic didn't exist, and Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia was housed at http://ar.wikipedia.org/ domain. This would be unfair to other Arabic languages, would it not? Well, this is the situation with Kurdish languages at the moment.
http://ku.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and almost all content in Kurmanji language http://ckb.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and all content in Sorani language http://diq.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and all content in Zazaki language (which may or may not be a Kurdish language) http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sdh : Southern Kurdish http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kiu : Kirmanjki
Now, as White Cat already mentioned, it is simply not neutral for us to imply, by housing the Kurmanji Wikipedia at the language code for "Kurdish", that Kurmanji is the 'default' Kurdish, when this is not the case. In fact, Sorani is the only variety of Kurdish that has official status in any country, being the co-official language of Iraq. Also, in comparison with your case (re:Arabic), Modern Standard Arabic (used at ar.wp) *is* the 'default' Arabic. So this is not a parallel situation and should not be treated as such, and a technical backlog is no reason to ignore it.
2011/9/16 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
Hoi, The argument for or against using ku.wikipedia.org are interesting but at this time rather irrelevant.There is a long list of pending name changes waiting to happen. Also we are quite happy to keep codes that are in fact representing macro languages like ar or Arabic. Thanks, GerardM
2011/9/16 とある白い猫 to.aru.shiroi.neko@gmail.com
Hi all,
It is proposed that Kurdish (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_language
) wikipedia (ku.wikipedia) be renamed to Kurmanji wikipedia (kmr.wikipedia) as currently ku.wikipedia predominantly hosts a single dialect which is Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. Local community oppose the proposal so far.
I'd like to explain some background behind the proposal. Kurdish
wikipedia
had been hosting multiple dialects since its creation. The three main dialects (in terms of article count) have been Zazaki (1.5-2.5 million speakers), Sorani (5 million speakers) and Kurmanji (9 million speakers). Zazaki is only mentioned here because it was hosted by Kurdish wikipedia
at
some point. Zazaki's language family is controversial as some sources put it as a dialect of Kurdish while others disagree with this. While details surrounding the linguistic properties are irrelevant for this proposal, the controversy itself is relevant.
Kurdish as a language has no standard from and the ISO considers ku (kur) to be a language code for a macro-language for multiple dialects.
Furthermore
said dialects are mutually unintelligible (per first Google hit:
http://www.thefellowship.info/Missions/Global-Missions/People-Groups/Kurds
) with multiple different types of scripts such as Sorani using rtl Arabic script and Kurmanji using ltr latin script and are different in both grammar and vocabulary. In addition Sorani is the only dialect used officially in north of Iraq by the Kurdistan Regional Government and is not the most common dialect of Kurdish (according to Wikipedia anyways).
- Zazaki dialect separated from Kurdish Wikipedia on 5 January 2007
with
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Zazaki
and had been steadily having an increase in article count and will
seemingly
overtake ku.wikipedia soon enough.
- Sorani dialect has seperated from Kurdish wikipedia on 14 November
2010 with
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kurdish_...)
and has steady contribution despite being a very recently created wiki.
- Minor dialects (in terms of article count) hosted by Kurdish
wikipedia
already have their relevant incubator pages with Southern Kurdish
created
on 29 October 2009 (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sdh) and Kirmanjki created on 30 July 2008 ( http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kiu).
Currently ku.wikipedia has very few tagged articles in non-Kurmanji dialects:
http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taybet:WhatLinksHere/%C5%9Eablon:Soran%C3%AE6
Sorani uses - There is a Sorani wikipedia
http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taybet:WhatLinksHere/%C5%9Eablon:Bi_kurdiya_ba%...
Southern Kurdish uses - There is an incubator entry for Southern Kurdish
http://ku.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taybet:WhatLinksHere/%C5%9Eablon:Z...
Zazaki uses - There is a Zazaki wikipedia
By keeping ku.wikipedia with its ku language code we are:
- Implying Kurmanji as the "official" dialect of Kurdish with the
Kurdish
macro-language code
- Implying Sorani as the lesser dialect when in fact it is the only
official one.
- Implying Zazaki to be a Kurdish dialect which Zazaki community
opposes fiercely as evident in closed language proposal of Zazaki of 2007.
- Confusing the reader whom visits ku.wikipedia only to find Kurdish
articles they cannot read unless they use Kurmanji dialect (only half
of
Kurdish speakers know Kurmanji if you add up the numbers for all other dialects).
- I'd like to highlight one remark from Sorani wiki proposal page:
"Even
though both "Kurmanj" and "Sorani" are subgroups (accent) of Kurdish language, they can cause of misunderstanding and misinterpretation for people who speak the language with these accents to each other. This
can
happen in different situations. For instance during regular conversations, or reading/understanding complex and professional contents.In general, "Kurmanj" and "Sorani" are not useful to each other since misinterpretation is so high while they are used in different places. --Marmzok 11 April 2009"
- This is the problem the reader deals on an article by article basis
unless they know the existence of Sorani wikipedia.
Relevant meta discussion is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Kur...
Might I remind that "The committee does not consider political
differences,
since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person
free,
unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than
information
from the viewpoint of individual political communities." ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy#Requisites
).
Therefore political arguments including the ones in the meta discussion
are
irrelevant.
- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
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