There is a Wikipedia in the Sardinian languagehttp://sc.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A0gina_printzipale. It uses the sc ISO-639-1 code. What was known as Sardinian became srd in the ISO-639-2. In the ISO-639-3 it was recognised as a macrolanguagehttp://www.sil.org/iso639-3/scope.asp#M; practically what was called Sardinian was split into four languageshttp://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=srd .
The Italian government has officially recognised the Sardinian language or the "Limba Sarda Comune". This is in essence a constructed language as it tries to make one language out of the four "dialects". One of the effects has been that some people prevent others from writing in one of the four languages on the sc.wikpedia.
The language committee of the Wikimedia Foundation has a request to approve a new language; one of the Sardinian languages, Sassarese with ISO code sdc.
There are two problems to deal with:
- The "Limba Sarda Comune" is not recognised as a language - The proponents of the "Limba Sarda Comune" reserve the sc.wikipediafor their language
This issue is political. The first thing that I understand when you go to the official website http://www.sardegnacultura.it/linguasarda/ is the notion of identity and indeed, to create one Sardinian identity it would be instrumental to have a unifying language. However, the map of the Sardinian languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lingue_di_Sardegna_mod.gif is clear, the island is divided in four.
Given that the language committee has as one of its rules that political arguments are not accepted, there are a few conclusions that we should make.
1. Sassarese can have a conditional approval 2. We urge the proponents of the Limba Sarda Comune to ask for the recognition of this newly constructed language from ISO.
I have had a chat with Debbie Garsidehttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_board#Debbie_Garsideabout all this, and I understand that it is necessary to apply for an ISO-639-3 code before an IANA language code is likely to be approved. At least fifty published works in the Limba Sarda Comune will be required. Thanks, GerardM
The thing is, LSC is not a language. It is a standardized dialect.
In fact, it is the official standard of the Sardinian regional government, unlike most other "standardized dialects" of minority languages in Europe (for example last time I checked, Limburgish, Lombard, Sicilian, Aragonese, do not have "official" standard forms).
Practically, linguistically, the "Sardinian language" of that macrolanguage can be divided in two parts - Corso-Sardinian, or Sassarese and Gallurese, and Autochtonous Sardinian, which includes Logudorese and Campidanese.
Legally, as far as the Sardinian region is concerned, there are 5 native languages in Sardinia: "Sardinian" including Logudorese and Campidanese, Sassarese, Gallurese, Catalan (in Alghera), and Tabarkinu (an old dialect of Ligurian).
I personally think it is wrong to say that Sardinians should be required to allow Logudorese and Capidanese "vernacular" writing in their pages - why don't you make es.wp allow Andalusian colloquial vernacular, or make the Italian Wikipedia allow Roman dialect? Linguistically, according to ISO, those varieties are part of those languages...
But those Wikipedias use a standard language. Just because ISO has separated Logudorese and Campidanese, whether it is correct or not, does not seem an approrpriate reason to split an existing Wikipedia.
However, I do personally believe that if someone requested a separate Logudorese Wikipedia it should be granted... but I do not see why a new request must be submitted to IANA by anybody at all.
Mark
On 10/09/2007, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
There is a Wikipedia in the Sardinian languagehttp://sc.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A0gina_printzipale. It uses the sc ISO-639-1 code. What was known as Sardinian became srd in the ISO-639-2. In the ISO-639-3 it was recognised as a macrolanguagehttp://www.sil.org/iso639-3/scope.asp#M; practically what was called Sardinian was split into four languageshttp://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=srd .
The Italian government has officially recognised the Sardinian language or the "Limba Sarda Comune". This is in essence a constructed language as it tries to make one language out of the four "dialects". One of the effects has been that some people prevent others from writing in one of the four languages on the sc.wikpedia.
The language committee of the Wikimedia Foundation has a request to approve a new language; one of the Sardinian languages, Sassarese with ISO code sdc.
There are two problems to deal with:
- The "Limba Sarda Comune" is not recognised as a language
- The proponents of the "Limba Sarda Comune" reserve the
sc.wikipediafor their language
This issue is political. The first thing that I understand when you go to the official website http://www.sardegnacultura.it/linguasarda/ is the notion of identity and indeed, to create one Sardinian identity it would be instrumental to have a unifying language. However, the map of the Sardinian languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lingue_di_Sardegna_mod.gif is clear, the island is divided in four.
Given that the language committee has as one of its rules that political arguments are not accepted, there are a few conclusions that we should make.
- Sassarese can have a conditional approval
- We urge the proponents of the Limba Sarda Comune to ask for the
recognition of this newly constructed language from ISO.
I have had a chat with Debbie Garsidehttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_board#Debbie_Garsideabout all this, and I understand that it is necessary to apply for an ISO-639-3 code before an IANA language code is likely to be approved. At least fifty published works in the Limba Sarda Comune will be required. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi!
As a matter of fact, LangCom does not accept "governments" as regulation sources, not until ISO does it first. The only regulatory source we have is ISO.
This is a protection against all possible political pressure, to which linguistics are always exposed. We don't say that ISO is infallible, we simply say that a larger opinion (i.e., international) is less likely to be biased in favor of somebody's interests. So no government "opinion" (even in form of a law) can be accepted.
If the Italian Government believes that their policy can gather international acceptance by the linguists' community, they are welcome to issue a request for they "opinion" to become a recognized international standard. ISO will issue a code for their new creature, and they can use it in a wiki (but NOT as SC, unless ISO says so). Until then, "Limba Sarda Comune" simply does not exist, as far as LangCom is concerned, because we do not issue any recognition ourselves.
The fact that it.wiki could be requested to accept romanesco, by following the same logics, is an exaggeration. The IT code is clearly identified with "italian standard", while the SC code has nothing to do with "Limba Sarda Comune". It's self evident, since one is classified as a macro-language, the other acts as a single entity that is not classified ANYWHERE.
We DO NOT make rules here, we simply apply them. Tomorrow somebody in Brussels will create a normative "United Romance Language" in order to cut translation expenses, and we will react just in the same way. No wiki until a competent international organ does not assign a code to it.
Having said so, if it.wiki was to accept content in Romanesco, they would help in preserving a very important part of the Italian culture, which I personally would applaud. But nobody can ask them to do so, because they are publishing exactly what they declare to publish (content in ITA). What must be stopped is an illegal redefinition of an international ISO code. That much is "policy". Romanesco has all my sympathy, but no official recognition, and my own opinions are but opinions, not a policy.
We stopped BE-x-old from occupying a code; we cannot be nicer to Italians when they have the same faults. When there is a policy it applies to everyone. We have an Italian citizen in LangCom, another in the Board, plus a German citizen resident in Italy who is chairing LangCom. The situation would be fairly easy to interpret as a "mafia creep" by the rest of the planet. Well, no favors to relatives here, rules are rules for everybody, no matter where they are from.
Hope it's clearer now.
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
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