Hi! I might have been a bit off with the English example.
I'm no expert so I can't tell how big a difference there is between the English variations, and is any difficulty in understanding of an article is caused by that.
Also I can't tell, would the peoples of the Balkan region really understand each other if they all chose to speak their own language consistently choosing "dialect" words over commons ones.
Anyway, its for the Serbs and Montenegrins to know if a similar system would be okay for them. Also I can't tell if the two people can work together in the same wiki. (From some of the messages posted here it seems the Serbian isn't that open a community, but I can't tell how widespread the anti-Montenegrin sentiment is in the community)
Also I don't think it would be fair to allow 3 dialects but deny a 4 , if a mistake was made, why should the 4th "suffer" from it...
Of course there might be a dilemma, that whats a wiki worth if it will start by importing all articles from the Croatian or Serbian wiki (thats what I would do...), this makes creating a fork not a so good idea.
The solution could be purely technical, make it possible with advanced regex dictionaries and user input to have all the dialect versions of an article. Also improve the switching from Cyrillic script to Latin as there are many places (especially talk pages), where parts of the text don't get translated...
Bence Damokos On 12/3/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Bence Damokos bdamokos@gmail.com wrote:
Hi! I am an outsider in this dispute, but I would like to give my opinion on the state of these four languages as I see them, after learning for some time Croatian, and having spoken with a friend who is more knowledgable than me.
What I see is that Montenegrin uses the ijekavica dialect of the so-called Serbo-Croatian language (which I think is THE artificial one from the 5 mentioned), while the Serbians use the ekavica dialect. This makes every second word different. Even though either is acceptable, you wouldn't wanna mix them in an article (as mixing British or American spelling: no one would really notice), it would stop your "train of thought" to decode each woord and decide which dialect it was written in. Requiring the use of either one would be unfair, and would violate the free speech rights of either of them, also it would lead to some more unnecessary tension.
Croatian uses latin script, and ijekavica (at least the official dialect), so Montenegrins could integrate there? Wrong. Montenegrin has many words borrowed from Turkish that Croatians might not understand, or would constantly replace with their Croatian counterparts, or just remove from articles.
The difference of words and dialect is a main difference between Serbian in Croatian. Apart from the dialet problem mentioned with the Montenegrins, Serbian language tends to use Western words by transliterating it phonetically into Serbian language, while Croatian tends to invent their own words. Compromise on this ground would either ignite tension, or be a factor in "deteriorating" Croatian language by introducing foreign words, for which there is already a Croatian version in use.
Bosnian: I'm no expert here, why this is a separate language :), if not for political reasons. I guess they have many Turkish words too. Anyway, if there is a Bosnian wiki, a Montenegrin one could also be.
Also, if I'm correct Montenegro had its state television in the Serbia and Montenegro era, that was broadcast it Montenegrin (language/dialect).
In conclusion, Serbo-Croatian was an invented language, without machine translation between the ijekavica/ekavica/ikavica dialects choosing either that is not the official in any a part of the region would lead to tensions, and the difference in words might also lead to misunderstandings, or at least heart national feelings if a "dialect version of a word" is changed to an other "for better understanding".
Anyway, I hope I didn't upset any one, and that I wasn't factually wrong, or misleading.
Regards, Bence Damokos
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I believe there is misunderstang over how the variations of English are handled on en.WP. There is no mixing of the variations (which are more than just spelling), and people would definately notice if there was. The way it works is that in an article on England, British conventions are used. In an article on America, the American conventions are used. In an article on Canada, Canadian conventions are used. Whenever there is a general article common to all areas (such as Dog) the original editor who started the article chooses which conventions to use. No one is allowed to go around changing the grammer and spelling to their prefered standards on general articles. In article where the title would be different (i.e. Petrol/Gasoline) a redirect is made to the original title. Of course people have not always liked this method and have tried to go around changing standards, but they are stopped and everyone moves on. I don't know these languages myself and I could be wrong here, but I do not see any significant differences from the situation in English.
BirgitteSB
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