Darko Bulatovic schreef: Hoi, Wikipedia is in its manifestations very much a multilingual project and very much not a multicultural project. Cultural and political reasons are not a reason to start another project. When you read the article about Montenegrin, the language on the English Wikipedia, it explains quite clearly that elements that are to make Montegrin special can be found outside of Montenegro as well. This means that from a linguistic point of view the case for a Montenegrin Wikipedia is pretty weak. There are languages where the cultural and political differences are quite big while there is no call for a split project. The Chinese and the Dutch wikipedias are good examples for this. It would be a good thing if you could find it in you to consider this and retract the application for a Montenegrin Wikipedia. Thanks, GerardM

Darko Bulatovic schreef: With your blanket statement that "political background of languages is undiscussable" you indeed end the discussion. In this you are wrong. The Mapuche people are going to court because the Chilean government and the Microsoft company insist on a given orthography. The Mapuche live in Chile and Argentina. This proves very much that the insistence of making a language a people "owned" by a country is very much not universal. If your POV was shared by the Wikimedia Foundation there would be a project specific to US English. By having one English Wikipedia the quality is much better and the POV of the project is very much more a NEUTRAL POV than it would otherwise be. Thanks, GerardM

Darko Bulatovic schreef: Hoi, What ISO language standard are you talking about ? As far as I am aware you are talking ISO-639-1/2. ISO-639-3 is quite different, ISO-639-6 will be different again. It is rich that you inform me that I am clueless about languages and standards. Maybe you have to do some research yourself. You did puff yourself up by stating that you are the "President of IT Association of Montenegro". I have been active in the IT business myself and, /that /does not qualify me as either a linguist or as a politician. It does qualify me to know if an IT person is qualified being either; it does not implicitly. Again, in your argument you value the political background. When it comes to a vote in the language sub committee, I will vote against the creation of a Montenegrin because the arguments provided are political and not linguistics. By your very arguments it seems impossible that a neutral point of view would be forthcoming. My advise is that for as much as a Montenegrin orthography exists, it should be permitted in the sr.wikipedia.org. Thanks, GerardM Some more motivation:: http://www.tol.cz/look/CER/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=14&am…

Darko Bulatovic wrote: Please, can you avoid quoting the whole thread at each reply unless it's really necessary? It becomes unreadable for people who read digests (and makes the text unnecessarily long). Thanks, Marco/Cruccone

I don't understand you very well here. Many language (mostly European)are having nation marks (English, French, German, Russian, Albanina, Greek, Italian, ....) so their process of building language is trough nation history. Same thing is with south Slavic language. It is not reference to country - more region in which people talk similar. History of south Slavic people ( Europe) is quite dense in political and demographic change, So many parts of South Slavs are developed differently try many centuries and that was also reflected on language. So here we have situation that all Balkan nations have their own languages and their wikipedias. I don't see how this same rule should be different for Montenegro. I will not mention that wikipedia is also possible for some artificial languages and don't have very harsh and strict rules regarding this. But in Montenegrin case it seems that people wish to close eyes. Why?

Ray Saintonge wrote: What linguistic evidence? I am asking you all this time to give such evidence. What are the rules on WMF about this? Is it the evidence that 200.000 people talk Montenegrin language? And I am not talking about countries I am talking about nation marks (Country don't always mean nation). I dont see that we follow each other up on this. You seems talk about something else. Darko Bulatovic

geni wrote: What linguists? Do you have some quotes about this? I am ready to talk about this. Regards, Darko Bulatovic

geni wrote: Do you have some reference on witch you build up your opinion? Please share with us. Darko Bulatovic

Sabine Cretella wrote: That is very specific case, As in Switzerland live Italians, Germans and Franks. In Montenegrin case in Montenegro lives 45% Montenegrin s, 35% Serbs, Albanians, Bosnnjaks,... On other cases those countries was colonies of mayor European empires. Sabine, When I come here my idea was to collaborate and cooperate with others. If that was not the case we could make our own wikipedia. But that is not the case. I agree with you about humans but I will add: Human also have stereotypes, mis understanding, limited knowledge about specific topics and dont judge always the same in same cases. Thank you for joining discussion, Darko Bulatovic

geni wrote: Will we ask for it or talk here if we don't thing there is language barrier? This started to look like philosophic question. We already get proposal from Serbian community, also we wait from Croatian community and Bosnian community. But for now there is no consensus between them. If there ever be one we will participate.

Hi, Darko Bulatovic a écrit : If you really mean to participate in a common Wikipedia for all variant of the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, then do it! There is http://sh.wikipedia.org/ which is just meant for that. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbocroatian_language Regards, Yann

On 11/30/06, elvis(a)chan.de <elvis(a)chan.de> wrote: And the benifit of doing that would be? No matter In this case we are not talkina about a dying language. We are tlaking about something that may or may not be a language. -- geni

On 12/1/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail(a)itam.ws> wrote: Languages don't need to be liveing in order extract information from them. Late Egyptian has been dead for over 2000 years. We can still extract informatrion from it. However this is irrelivant since if Montenegrin is indeed a seperate language there is no evidence it is dying. Enough to ask questions. In this case the relivant question is what is the general view of the experts in the field? -- geni

Yann Forget wrote: Yann, How much do you know about this? You are angry at me Yann? That I called you to not make assumptions? Your assumptions affect half of million people Yann.I hope that you relise that, as I don't really understand you. Sabin did at least showed her point of view here, and you just make comments without any argument. Regards, Darko Bulatovic

Darko Bulatovic wrote: I don't think that Yann was expressing anger. His suggestion to use the sh.wikipedia was a constructive one. Of Montenegrin, Serbian, Albanian, and Bosnian mentioned above most people outside of the Balkans would see only Albanian as different enough from the others to merit being called a language. To say that this issue will affect half a million people (by which I assume you mean the entire population of Montenegro) is overly dramatic; most of those people will just carry on normally with their lives no matter how the arguments here are resolved. The five of us who have so far participated with you in this discussion are from five different countries (none of which is Serbia), and five different native languages. I have seen three of the others regularly participate in discussions about language, so I would pay attentiont their opinions even when I don't agree with them. If you really want to do things for the Montenegrin language you could do better than argue in favour of the correlation between nation and language. Begin by giving references to existing Montenegrin dictionary and grammar books, showing Montenegrin words in Wiktionary and how they differ from other Serbo-Croatian languages, show us the important differences in Montenegrin grammar, or.add important out-of-copyright books by Montenegrin authors to Wikisource. Ec

Darko Bulatovic wrote: ... I have no reason to question your translation. A person who carried on in this way in an English language project would very soon be criticized severely, and some would demand some kind of punishment. To me this quotation by itself is a strong argument against the separate projects. As much as this attitude may thrive in a closed community of like-minded people, I'm sure that it would not be well received in a combined serbo-croatian project. It is clearly not a Neutral Point of View. It is arguably more difficult to maintain neutrality in a small wiki. It is more likely to pursue the neutrality of the minority than a broader neutrality because most outsiders simply don't understand the language, and if the few that do have their own separate wiki there is no incentive to do so. A combined project that would force these people to get along and work at solving their differences would benefit NPOV. As Wikipedia grows this can have severe long-term implications about the application of NPOV. Ec

Yann Forget wrote: You are one that do that Yann. I don't have reason to doubt that you know what you are talking about and why. What you are saying is childish. It is interesting that you don't find any respect to prove your claims to this community. I am calling you hole this time in this thread to just do that, but you go on same road of false accusations and assumptions. And you find this OK? Yann, I don't think that this is level of discussion on which I wish to participate. Regards, Darko Bulatovic

On 11/29/06, Darko Bulatovic <mail(a)itam.ws> wrote: Not so much. there are a number of different forms of English and yet it is accepted that there is only one language. In some areas "thou" still exists. In others colour is spelled color. What standisation there is is often not goverment mandated. The oxford manual of style is not writen by the goverment. It shouldn't be Well yes because we are yet to establish that the language exists. Not really. the WMF is based in the US the board is mostly from the US and most significant non US chapter is prbably germany. -- geni

very The problem that is discussed here looks like political problem, it is not yet at that level ( e.g. WMF Board of Trustees), As I can see it is just affected some part of this community. I just don't understand this dilemma here regarding Montenegrin Wikipedia, so I am just trying to realize what possible reasons cold be for this. I didn't aspect this kind of welcome here on WMF, as we indeed had a good intentions. So much assumptions here with no reason, as we didn't do anything to provoke this. Darko Bulatovic

Hi, Just to be clear, I don't care that the Montenegrin is created or not. But I care that it would be created and become a battle field. Which means that if it is created, there should be appropriate measures to insure that it does not become a back spot on Wikimedia, like the Moldavan Wikipedia is now. The problem is not that the Moldavan Wikipedia was created. The problem is that Moldavian people did not benefit from the creation of the wiki. Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

geni wrote: Criteria for ISO 639-1 The following criteria for defining new languages in ISO 639-1 has been established by the ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee. * Relation to ISO 639-2. Since ISO 639-1 is to remain a subset of ISO 639-2, it must first satisfy the requirements for ISO 639-2 and also satisfy the following. * Documentation. o a significant body of existing documents (specialized texts, such as college or university textbooks, technical documentation manuals, specialized journals, subject-field related books, etc.) written in specialized languages o a number of existing terminologies in various subject fields (e.g. technical dictionaries, specialized glossaries, vocabularies, etc. in printed or electronic form) * Recommendation.A recommendation and support of a specialized authority (such as a standards organization, *governmental body*, linguistic institution, or *cultural organization*) * Other considerations o the number of speakers of the language community o t*he recognized status of the language in one or more countries* o the support of the request by *one or more official bodies* * Collective codes. ISO 639-1 does not use collective codes. If these are necessary the alpha-3 code shall be used. This document was revised on 22 Sept. 2006 as approved by the ISO 639 Joint Advisory Committee on 10 June 2006. This replaces the published text in ISO 639-2, sections 4.1.1, 4.1.3, and A.2.1. ISO 639-2 defines a proper subset of the totality of alpha-3 language identifiers in all parts of ISO 639. The primary applications for which ISO 639-2 is intended include libraries, archives and other documentation applications. Thus, the general criterion for inclusion of a language in ISO 639-2 is that there is a significant body of literature in the language or describing the language. In order to establish this, the following objective and subjective metrics will be applied. * Number of documents. The request for a new language identifier shall include evidence that one agency holds 50 different documents in the language or that five agencies hold a total of 50 different documents among them in the language. Documents include all forms of material and are not limited to text. This is a necessary requirement, but not sufficient in and of itself. In addition the following requirements will be considered. * Size and variety of literature. The size and variety of the literature in the language, be it written or oral, will be considered and should be documented in the proposal. The documentation may be in the form of reference to library holdings or bibliographies or more general statements quantifying the literature and its variation. ** National or regional support* The proposal should preferably be explicitly supported by a national or regional language authority or standardizing body. If such support for some reason is unobtainable, a recommendation from another authority or language organization will be taken into account. * Formal or official status If the language in question has some sort of "official" status, documentation of this status will greatly support the proposal. The assignment of formal status to languages is in no way consistently practiced throughout the world, *and the lack of such status is not a negative argument if other requirements are met.* * Formal education If the language is used as a means of instruction in formal education on any level, documentation of this use will support the proposal. Teaching of the language is also relevant, in particular if the teaching is extensive. I think that give list of requirements for standardization so that we don't waste time in future discussion on this. I hope thios will clear up my reference to government and to political aspect of this story. Regards, darko Bulatovic

geni wrote: Governments also need style manuals for official publications, but these do not have the force of law for non-governmental operations. Our schools never make reference to any kind of official spelling or grammar when teaching children. English, more than any other language is based on history, custom and usage. There is such a thing as poor language skills for native speakers, but one feature that makes it very difficult for the health of other languages is the easy acceptance by English of ways of speaking drawn from other languages.

Darko Bulatovic wrote: Being multilingual and multicultural does not mean that each language needs its own Bantustan. South Africa already showed us that apartheid was a bankrupt system. Post-colonial Africa had to accept that abandoning colonial boundaries in favour of a return to tribal areas would be a recipe for chaos. To say that languages must be driven by politics is absurd. Generally it works the other way. Tribes develop their own way of talking, and use that as an excuse for making politics. Culture is absolutely connected with language. But a special language in a closed circle prevents the culture from being spread to any but those who already know the language. I'm glad you use the word "dialect". If you and a Serb speak with each other (preferably about a neutral topic) in your own dialects you each should be able to understand most of what the other is saying. Thus they are dialects of the same language. If you can't understand each other they are different languages. Using Wikipedia to spread nationalism is absolutely contrary to a Neutral Point of View. Wikipedia did start in the United States, but if the Americans who were involved at the earliest stages had insisted that Wikipedia was there to promote US nationalism it would have failed miserably in all other English-speaking countries. Personally, I don't think that there should ever have been separate Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian wikipedias. If any of them are using their respective projects to spread their own nationalism that is wrong. As long as they have their own wikis nobody from within the Yugoslav communities will be willing to seriously criticise them for it, and nobody from outside the Yugoslav communities will understand the language enough to be able to do it. I can understand that Montenegrins can feel prejudiced when the same mistake is not made for them as was made for the Serbians. Your use of English may have a few errors, but not enough to comment about, or to leave the impression that you are not making sense. (Neither Gerrard nor Yann are native English speakers.) My own view of multiculturalism is typically Canadian, and that involves appreciating that a country is made up of many cultures that bring a rich diversity into a country. I don't think that bringing a bad image is a factor. It's a broader question of linguistics. The only assumption there is that what you want is the right thing. There is another alternative. Start using the serbo-croatian (sh) Wikipedia. It was the original Yugoslav project, and is still alive and well. Ec

I thought that mixing different cultures in the same wiki was a way to reach NPOV... If there are a Montenegrin wp, and a Serbian wp, will we not have a Montenegrin version of the history and a Serbian version of the history? I don't see how this is NPOV... Or maybe I didn't understand well (quite possible), then please explain. Regards, Kip.