Re: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki

Although I have nothing useful add on mo.wiki, I am tempted to comment on the situation in a more general may. As some participants have noted, it is not an easy thing to say what is a language and what is not. The Norwegian linguist Einar Haugen used to say that a language is a dialect which has its own army. The question has been studied a lot in Norway, because the country uses two official variants of Norwegian which are quite close to each other (from an outsider's viewpoint). Swedish is both the national language of Sweden and the second official language of Finland. Although spoken Swedish in Finland differs somewhat from the Swedish spoken in Stockholm, the written languages are officially the same. In addition to Finland, Finnish is also spoken in Sweden and Russia. The language spoken and written by the original Finnish-speaking population of Lappland is called "meänkieli", and its ortography differs considerably from standard Finnish. In this form, it has a legal minority language status in Sweden, although most Finns in Finland would consider it just another dialect. You might say that this was a political decision to create a new language, but I would certainly welcome a wikipedia in meänkieli. Finnish is also spoken in Russia, but c. 1939 the Soviet government decided that the language should be written in cyrillic script and called Karelian. This experiment was abandoned after the war. If Moldovan is just the same as Romanian, then it is like Swedish in Finland. If it differs in some respects from Romanian, but uses the same script, then it is like meänkieli. When it is written in Cyrillic, it is like Karelian. If Moldova decides to accept all of them, then it would be like Norway. The problem with standards is that someone can always introduce a new standard. Pekka Gronow Jacky PB <dpotop1(a)yahoo.com Sent by: wikipedia-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org 12.12.2006 12:22 Please respond to wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org To wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org cc Subject Re: [Wikipedia-l] Abuse on mo.wiki 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? 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? Dpotop The whole discussion here What you say about not needing regulatory bodies is simply that they are going to adopt the appro many

Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org

_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org