Jacky PB schreef:
Your question
of "who regulates this language in
Transnistria" assumes
that a language needs regulation. This is not
necessary at all...
Right. But a **standard**, like ISO-????, is about
**standardisation**. That is, some form of standard
language different from other standard languages in
the dialect continuum. My question is: what will be
the characteristics of Standard Moldovan, as defined
by the standard?
A standard is there to provide information on what linguistic entities
exist. When the Moldovans are happy to call their language Romanian that
is what it will be. When others make a distinction between Romanian and
Moldovan based on orthography, script whatever and, when this has always
been known as Moldovan..
You brought this standard in the discussion saying
that it will close the Romanian vs. Moldovan
discussion. I hope it will, but can't help asking
myself how. Just assigning language codes is not
sufficient. Someone has to say: this is standard RO,
this is standard MO, beat off. Can you? Is ISO-????
going to define this? Or just follow, I repeat, old
Soviet practices, by saying: On our side of the
fronteer the language is called Moldovan with code MO,
on yours it is called Romanian with code RO, and they
are different?
The notion of "old Soviet practices" is again very much a political
way
of looking at it. The notion of identifying linguistic entities is at
issue. The whole point is in being able to identify unambiguously and
having an application for such a distinction. Knowing what
script/orthography to use is part of this.
The WMF has been great in allowing people to use their own language.
When the language is mutually understandable, like for American and
British English (and all the other variations) we have a history of
keeping things together. When this is not the case, we have a history
of bringing things together like we do for Chinese. What is acceptable
is for one community to trash talk another. The politics around the
Moldovan project make that people do not accept that some need Cyrillic
content. The arguments used are political and have nothing to do with
linguistics.
In order to get a solution people have to respect the needs of others
and both vandalism or trash talking only serve to not get a solution
where we can work on a joint project that can be read in either
script/orthography and provides the NPOV which is central to what
Wikipedia stands for. In my personal opinion, the quality of both the
mo.wikipedia and the ro.wikipedia cannot be considered good when it is
impossible to integrate and to serve the needs that are expressed by the
existence of both projects.
Thanks,
GerardM