On 4/26/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Milos,
What are the differences between Ekavian-Iyekavian? If they're relatively small, like spelling differences such as between US and World English, I think such conversion would be unnessecary and maybe even silly.
Let me try again... :)
1. You can write a lot of text in any standard English without knowledge what is this English; almost always you would know is text in Ekavian or Iyekavian during the first sentence.
2. Official Orthography of Serbian Language (Pravopis srpskoga jezika) is written in two variants: Ekavian and Iyekavian.
3. Official language in Serbia is only Serbian. But, according to Montenegro's constitution, official language is Serbian Iyekavian. I think the same situation is in Republic of Srpska.
4. Around 20.000 lexemes was affected by this process (with around 150.000 word forms; Serbian language has inflection).
5. From the primary school to the university, people from different parts of Serbian language area learn different standards. There are much more Ekavians then Iyekavians (if we are talking only about Serbian language area: more then 8 millions of Ekavians and less then 2 millions of Iyekavians). Serbian Wikipedia is dominant Ekavian, but we should try to give articles in minority standard, too.
6. Let imagine such situation:
We have six persons. The first is from Belgrade (Serbia, speaks Serbian Ekavian), the second is from Podgorica (Montenegro, speaks Serbian Iyekavian), the third is from Banja Luka (Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks Serbian Iyekavian), fourth is from Zagreb (Croatia, speaks Croatian, which is also Iyekavian), fifth is from Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks Croatian, which is also Iyekavian) and the sixth is from Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks Bosnian, which is also Iyekavian).
Persons from Zagreb (cro-iyekav), Belgrade (ser-ekav) and Podgorica (ser-iyekav) would have some (but, very very little) problems to understand some words which is spoken by person from Sarajevo (bos-iyekav) because those words have Turkish origin. Persons from Belgrade and Podgorica would have less problems then person from Zagreb because there are some Turkish words which is used in speech in Serbia. But, all of that problems are very very small. Persons from Mostar (cro-iyekav) and Banja Luka (ser-iyekav) would not have any problem to understand person from Sarajevo.
Persons from Sarajevo, Belgrade, Banja Luka and Podgorica would have some problems to understand person from Zagreb (for example, Croatian language has Slavic names of months, Serbian and Bosnian have Latin names of months).
But, if any of Iyekavians send mail in Latin alphabet to the person from Belgrade about usual things (how they feel, about weather, etc.), person from Belgrade would have a lot of problems to recognize who was that person by origin/location. Maybe person from Banja Luka listen Croatian radio or television, maybe person from Podgorica does the same... Maybe person from Mostar listen Serbian or Bosnian radio or television, maybe person from Zagreb, too.
However, they can understand each other a lot better then they understand Slovenians or Macedonians or Bulgarians. I think that you have more problems to understand my English then we have to understand each other :)
7. As I said before, if you think only in formal way, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia should be only one. And people from those Wikipedias should not care if the article is in Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian variant.
But, there are "some problems in communication" between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks and we can't have one Wikipedia. Also, there are some cultural differences. And inside of Serbian speaking people, there are some cultural differences, too. As a person who speaks majority variant I have to think about minority and their needs.
P. S. I am just waiting the time when people from Montenegro would ask for their own Wikipedia ;)