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:… 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_Ku… 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) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

If all Kurdish editors had been in favor of having a "Kurdish Wikipedia"

an "emblem of their unified ethnic identity", as you claim, then there

never have been a separate Sorani Wikipedia.