This is incorrect. There are three different languages used as an educational medium in *public* schools in Transnistria. It is up to the parents of a child to choose which school to send their kids to - Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, or bilingual.
Last I heard, there are also "Romanian" schools, but I am not certain of their status.
To be certain, a majority of ethnic Moldovans in Transnistria are in favor of separation/independence from the Republic of Moldova. This is a fact that has been shown numerous times in various polls by several organizations (including Western polling organizations). This fact is often overlooked by people toeing the Moldovan party line of "territorial integrity" and claiming that ethnic Moldovans are oppressed or coerced or somehow unwilling participants in Transnistria. Certainly, emigration has been high from the "country", especially among ethnic Moldavians.
Somehow it seems that the loudest voices about oppression in Transnistria come not from people who are from the area or who have left it, but from Moldovan partisans. The issue of Latin-script schools was certainly huge, but last I heard the schools continue to operate although no longer with government funding. Clearly, if parents object to their children being taught Cyrillic script in school, they could send their kids to a Russian-medium school and teach them Latin script Moldovan at home, or send them to a Romanian-medium school (but I think they are overcrowded already), or even leave the country.
But I think for the majority of parents of pupils in such schools (of which there are many, many, many), script is simply not an issue, they are more worried about putting food on the table than having petty fights over how to write their language.
To be clear, my position would be to allow for the closing of mo.wp if and ONLY if good read-write automatic conversion is implemented on ro.wp _first_.
Mark
On 08/11/2007, Johannes Rohr jorohr@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:18:26 +0100, GerardM wrote:
Hoi, You are wrong, the Romanian Wikipedia is in the Latin script.. the Moldovan is not, consequently your conclusion does not follow from your argument. Thanks,
While it is theoretically possible that there are individual speakers of Romanian/Moldovan in Transnistria who, due to the pro-Russian policy of the Transnistrian authorities read only Cyrillic Romanian, the likelihood is extremely small. As I understand, the contemporary use of Cyrillic for Moldovan/Romanian is a product of continued coercion in Transnistria.
In my view, the main argument against the Moldovan Wikipedia is that it never had a native community. There is simply no demand from the side of Moldovans from either side of the Dniester river for such a wiki.
Apart from that, I feel that the use of the mo language code is a misuse, as the standard alphabeth in Moldova is Latin, not Cyrillic.
Apart from that, I am well aware, that Romanian has a history of being written in Cyrillic. I would even dare say, that the Latin script is a relatively new invention, as the Romanian ortodox church has historically used the cyrillic alphabeth well into the 19th centure, IIRC.
However, I don't think that this warrants a separate Wikipedia edition, else we could also have a separate German editon in Fraktur script...
Thanks,
Johannes
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