On 10/21/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
What I support is not a "hoax", but rather the right to determine one's own sociolinguistic and sociocultural identity.
Mark, at least two linguists (User:Angr is another) said twice that story about Zlatiborian is a hoax.
I strongly support sociocultural identities of various people, but this one would be silly if there would not be some not-so-good-informed people who support them.
Unlike Montenegrins/Montengrin, there are no people who identify themself as Zlatiborians/Zlatiborian speekers except in regional sense.
The person who is propagate Zlatiborian language (Djordje Bozovic) is a bureaucrat on Serbian Wikipedia and declares himself "as Serbian nationalist and Zlatiborian local-patriot" (I can quote his edits on Serbian Wikipedia if anyone wants). BTW, I am not sure what to think about the person who started the story again (User:SellackAlex). She wrote that she is working on Philological Faculty in Belgrade, Departmant of pedagogy and andragogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ASellackAlex&diff=260079...) while I can say that there are no such Departmant on _my_ faculty. She corrected it (the correct faculty is Faculty of Philosophy) after I noted this on sr: vilage pump. (Djordje's sock puppet?)
I would like to see a people who works on their sociocultural identities. I would like to see live Chakavian, Kaykavian and Torlakian dialects/languages. But, there are no such trends in Balkans.
But, trends such as "I am living in down town of Belgrade and I am proud of it; people who are not living in down town are less civilized, less important etc." as well as "I am living in Cacak and I am more Serb then others" are very often. In some cases it goes up to quasi-ethnical declaring as "Dorcolian" (the part of Belgrade), "Belgradian", "Zlatiborian" etc. But, again, there are very few of them who would say "I am talking Dorcolian, not Serbian/SC/B/C".
Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin have very small differences. The only reason why they are "separate languages" is political. Between 200.000 and 10.000.000 of people say for themself that they are speaking the language with different name.
But, in the case of Zlatiborian (Belgradian, Dorcolian) it is idiosyncretic. Uzice (the main city of the Zlatibor region) has maybe 50.000 of inhabitans. The whole region has around 100.000 of inhabitans. If 250 of people say for themself that they are speaking Zlatiborian, we would have it in statistics (from 2002). But, there are no any kind of mentioning of Zlatiborian language in statistics (you have the blank line to write what is your language if it is not some of the main languages).
So, less of 250 people say that their language is Zlatiborian language and this speech is the basis of the Serbian Iyekavian standard.
While I don't have anything against anyone who says that "(s)he is speaking Glapolgaptoringian language" even if it is literal English, I think that:
1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. If Glapolgaptoringian is the same as English and 100 humans call it Glapolgaptoringian, then it may be noted in the article about English that some people call it in such way. Idiosyncretic naming should stay inside of user space (yes, I agree to move it into Aleksandra's user space but not redirect, and I would say it on the TfD page). Otherwise it makes mass.
2. Wikipedia is not the place for ethnical/national constitution. In the case of Zlatiborian, English Wikipedia is used for that case ("Zlatiborian exists, you can see the article about Zlatiborian on Wikipedia!") I would support Zlatiborians if they are asking for schools in Zlatiborian etc., even I think it is silly. But, I _didn't_heard_ about them and their needs yet!
So, if it is OK to say in Wikipedia article "10 people call Serbian language Zlatiborian" or "Mark Williamson calls English language Glapolgaptoringian", it is OK to keep the language tag.
Also, note that he/she/they took two-letters code "zb"... As well as I took three-letters code for Belgradian. Do you think that there are more relevant languages which would need those codes?
In the past, it would have been possible for many people to change their cultural identity than it is now, and in many cases they would be accepted by the community they sought to join.
If somebody decided that they were part of an ethnic group that previously didn't exist (like if I suddenly decided today I were a Glapolgaptoringian), in some parts of the world what they said would be taken at face value.
If somebody wants to say that their mother tongue is called Zlatiborian, we should let them.
I agree with that. But, as I understud explicite rules on English Wikipedia -- Wikipedia is not the place where all human knowledge should be kept. If someone calls his/her language Zlatiborian even it is the same as Serbian and other Zlatiborians (in the sense of rebion) call their language Serbian, then it is idiosyncretic, not relevant in the sense of encyclopedia.
And, of course, when Wikipedia becomes "the place where all human knowledge should be kept" I would completely agree to keep Zlatiborian articles and user boxes.
Again somebody makes the daft mistake of bringing the US into this. When I speak of self-determination for indigenous people or independence for regions in other corners of the earth, people often say something like "Well, why don't you support Texas independence then?" and the most simple answer to that is that I do to the extent that Texans themselves support it. I am not a hypocrit(e).
Yes, Mark, I understand that you would support Texans if they say that they are talking Texanian even it is the same as English as well as I support Montenegrins to call their language as Montenegrin even it is (almost) the same as Serbian.
But, there are a lot of differences between Montenegrins and Zlatiborians. I hope that I explained what are the differences.