In Moldova proper, virtually everyone knows how to
read/write Latin script,
Do you know this for certain?
because the government isn't allowed to use
Cyrillic script (it's
unconstitutional, since Latin is specified as offical script).
Well, did you know that governments can't deal with 100% of their
citizens using writing? In Moldova, somewhere between 1% and 4% of the
citizens are illiterate altogether (can't read or write). How does the
government deal with these people? And why couldn't they deal the same
way with Cyrillic people??
The case is quite interesting - in rural areas, less
people actually write in Cyrillic, because rural areas are much less Russified.
Ronline, that's simply not true. You know that's not true, because you
and I had a lengthy discussion on it at Talk:Moldovan_language, where
I provided you with a source which documents the fact that in rural
areas Cyrillic is more used. Rural areas are less _Russified_, yes.
But simply using Cyrillic to write Moldovan has nothing to do with
being Russified -- in 1980, even monolinguals used Cyrillic to write
the language, no matter whether they were from the city or the
countryside.
But consider this case:
A farmer, Gheorghe Curechi, went to school in the Soviet period. He
left school when he turned 14 so he could work in the fields. At his
school, he learned some good stuff, but only a little bit of Russian.
Most of his schooling was in his hearth language, a language he calls
Moldovan because that's what his teacher at school told him it was
named.
He isn't an idiot, he isn't behind the times, he knows very well that
Moldova is now called "Republica Moldova" instead of RSSM. And he
knows that since 1989, his language is now written using the "French
alphabet", like the language of the neighbouring country, Romanian,
has been for as long as he knew.
His grandchildren learn this alphabet at school, but he doesn't really
know it. He can read some of the basic things. He doesn't get the
newspaper, but if he did, he wouldn't be able to read it.
He keeps a diary, which he writes in every day. He does it to keep his
wits sharp, since he lives alone. And of course, he uses Cyrillic.
The last time he went into town, a few months ago, he had no troubles
understanding anybody, but he didn't know what most of the signs meant
because they were mostly written in the "French alphabet" which he
doesn't know.
Gheorghe doesn't really care to learn the Latin alphabet because he
doesn't have much need for it. He has a few dusty old books in his
posession, their covers have fallen off. Three of them are in Russian
so he doesn't really understand them, but the other ones are all
written in Moldovan-Cyrillic. He has already read them though, and he
doesn't have much use for them anyhow.
This story is obviously fictional -- It'd be a bit funny if there were
really some farmer named "gheorghe curechi" (or as he spells it,
reopre kypekb).
previously wrote in Cyrillic have been accustomed so
far to ubiquitous text in Latin.
What about my example with Mr Curechi? What need would he ever have
for the Latin alphabet?
You could argue that he doesn't use Wikipedia either because he
doesn't have a computer. Well, we could use the same criteria to argue
to get rid of most Wikipedias in African languages. But there is the
hope that someday, a printed version might be made, and it could be
distributed.
Surely we shouldn't just ignore the minority of Moldovans who are like
Mr KYPEKb?
So, as I said before, I don't think this Cyrillic
script Wikipedia
serves any really practical purpose.
The people who work on it now (not just me) disagree... otherwise,
they'd just be wastingtheir time.
Their "emotional" links to Moldova and to an
extent Romania are
therefore quite strong.
Sources, please?
I presume about half of those people would know and
prefer the
Latin alphabet, which leaves about 100,000 people that would
actually write in Cyrillic and may have some trouble
reading/writing Latin script.
Well, even if it is just 100,000 total, that's still not a negligible number.
Mark
--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin