What kind of doublespeak is that? The purpose of language is to confer meaning. If the three dialects are mutually intelligible and we have a means to deal with differences in script, then there is in fact just one language as far as we are concerned. In other words, if articles in one can be copied to the others and only require minor changes in writing (if at all; esp in cases of use of the same script), then there is only one language and thus only a need for one wiki.
-- mav
Are you people crazy or blind? The point is that THESE PEOPLE DON'T WANNA HAVE 1 ENCYCLOPEDIA. The proof is everywhere. E.g. why were SR, HR and BS created? Because people wanted to. Why is SH so underdeveloped (and 200, not 2000, is a very optimistic number for articles made in the project, not copied word by word from elsewhere)? Because close to no one wants to contribute to it. Is there an ISO for SH? No there isn't. And you can't really compare English with these languages. There's been a war for crying out loud. People have been through a lot and you can't just neglect the political aspect. Has there been any resistance in, say, Australian or Canadian communities? I don't think so. Unlike English, these three languages are not that similar and, because of the cultural and political reasons (again, you can't neglect those, because those are some of the lifes' aspects; after all, we aren't robots), one project shared by all three language users could never exist. You just cannot force people to merge the knowledge after the projects have been successful for a few years on their own. You'd definitely get resistance and you'll just disrupt the Balkans again. You'd do more damage than good.
Does this confusion pass over into reading aswell? I have trouble understanding what some people with thick English accents say, doesn't mean I can't understand everything that they write.
Perhaps if you are struggling with understanding something written in the Croatian or Bosnian Wikipedias, you could pass it over to someone else to translate for you?
Stop clouding the issue.
Fran
They differ in reading as well as they differ in comprension. Let me give you an example: My friend went to Bosnia to see her relatives (she goes anually). When she returned from Bosnia, she was overwhelmed by the fact that she learned so many new words. Bosnian is constantly being under influence of Muslims and there you go. I'm afraid I won't understand them should I ever go there. Another example is the fact that according to my unofficial survey, most of the people my age (18 or so, which is an important age group) and some of the other ages don't actually know the names of the months in Croatian. Croatian is constantly being filled with new words and I applaud that - the language is evolving. But the fact is - with so many new words, I am not able to write in Croatian. Also, as an example, I went to HR wikipeda and pasted an article from SR about my home town. I didn't want to leave it in Serbian, so I "translated" (quotations are because I didn't do a very good job at it) it into Croatian and I thought it was pretty good. SpeedyGonsales approached me and told me it was accellent, but he had to change things I forgot to change during the translation. After that, I gained the impression that I wasn't able to write in Croatian. Now, imagine a Wikipedia where there are considerable language distinctions. Which norm should I use? If everyone keeps writing the way they feel, then you'd get a language salad. There would be constant fights because of the political differences et al. The project would fail miserably. SH is holding up because less than a handful of people are "contributing" to it. The reason why I want this project closed is because it's really unnecessary to have a 4th encyclopedia, when 3 are functioning just great on their own. Now all of a sudden, a group of foreign people just want to intervene and decide what's best for us, without any information at all. Why is that "foreigners" (I am using this word to describe people that don't speak SR, BS or HR) only voted for keeping SH whereas most of the local people voted for closing? *Every problem in the world will get solved the minute someone from the outside stops meddling!*