Since I was one of the blocked in the sh project and I am one of the guys that's "most responsible" for this, I thought that it would be best to write here.
I agree with Elephantus here and I think that this project represents nothing but a carbon copy of some articles from three distinct wikipedias. Pokrajac, one of the admins at SH constantly claims that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are same languages, which is completely insane. The languages have started diverging a long time ago and since the 1990s, they have become more distant. It is true that the speakers of those 3 languages are mutually intelligible, but that doesn't mean that they speak the same language.
Moreover, they speak culturally and liguistically 3 different languages and it's sometimes hard for me to understand what Bosnians or Croats are saying just because of the diversity (I'm a Serb, by the way). Also, these three wikipedias came out of Serbocroatian Wikipedia for a reason. And they are not going to converge again and merge into SH. It's an idealistic pro-yugoslavian thought that might work in an alternate reality, but taking cultural, linguistic and other properties into consideration, this can never be achieved and striding towards it is only one step forward, but seven steps back.
Furthermore, as far as I know, there aren't any statistics proving that a percentage of people claim that Serbocroatian language still exists, or even less that they use it. If there were some kind of evidence that, say, 20% of the people that speak sr, hr or bs, still consider Serbocroatian as a valid language, then there wouldn't be problems. But, there is some kind of public awareness - it is my opinion that most of the people dislike the phrase Serbocroatian and that they would stick with something less contrived.
Conversely, I'd like to say that the space used for this project (read: duplication of material that could/should be found elsewhere) is the space that an African language of millions may use for spreading cultural beliefs etc.
Overall, I think that keeping this project alive would be a selfish idea, because only 3 people are willing to really contribute to it (btw, don't let the recent changes as they are now fool you - they are usually very slow, but filled with new articles with summaries like /Copied from Serbian Wikipedia/, /Pasted from Croatian Wikipedia/ et al.)
And now to reply to some earlier posts: To Daniel Meyer: As I said on IRC, you're very wrong. I'm sorry to break it to you this way, but Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian ARE different languages, albeit mutually intelligible. And the political conotation is way too big to neglect. People have chosen to have separate wikipedias: just look at the growth of the three in comparison to the "united one" (which is basically a fork). The three didn't come out of the SH for no reason.
I agree with you that an active community means that the project should be kept. In this case, the community is only relatively active (in this case, activity = blatant copying and, although not a crime, it is generally frowned upon). What I'm trying to say is that 3 people with IMO wrong beliefs are holding this project down and because of that, they have sympathizers that agree with them, although they don't really know the problem itself.
To Dejan Cabrilo: Knock it off with POV. I think it's better to have POV in some articles (that are properly tagged) and just wait for those articles to meet better contributors. Rome wasn't built in a day. What I think is wrong is the lack of policy of Serbocroatian Wikipeda - there is no policy about the script. You can write in Cyrillics, you can write in Latin script, and no one really cares, which is IMO inexcusible. Furthermore, this appearance of 2 scripts in the system messages is just wrong and useless. Since variants (script conversion) is going to be introduced in Serbian Wikipedia shortly, Serbocroatian is becoming obsolete.
Thanks for your time. Filip Maljkovic, bureaucrat from Serbian wikipeda
But linguistically almost _the_ test of "what is a language" is mutual comprehensibility. If they are mutually comprehensible they you should be able to understand Bosnians or Croats.
If the communication problems result from shared cultural assumptions (eg religious, popular culture references) then this no different from speakers of various varieties of English.
Once you say they are mutually comprehensible you are saying that for non-social reasons they are the same language.
Caroline/secretlondon
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Filip Maljkovic Sent: 08 January 2006 11:20 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia
The languages have started diverging a long time ago and since the 1990s, they have become more distant. It is true that the speakers of those 3 languages are mutually intelligible, but that doesn't mean that they speak the same language.
Moreover, they speak culturally and liguistically 3 different languages and it's sometimes hard for me to understand what Bosnians or Croats are saying just because of the diversity (I'm a Serb, by the way). Thanks for your time. Filip Maljkovic, bureaucrat from Serbian wikipeda _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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--- Filip Maljkovic dungodung@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with Elephantus here and I think that this project represents nothing but a carbon copy of some articles from three distinct wikipedias. Pokrajac, one of the admins at SH constantly claims that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are same languages, which is completely insane. The languages have started diverging a long time ago and since the 1990s, they have become more distant. It is true that the speakers of those 3 languages are mutually intelligible, but that doesn't mean that they speak the same language.
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
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
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!*
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.
True that many people don't know Croatian words for months. That's why in casual conversation, we either use international names or just number them.
Funny you should say that Bosnian is hard to understand. Few weeks ago, a Bosnian film "Go West" was shown in Belgrade, and it's producer Ahmed Imamović was a guest on Belgrade radio station B92. Of course, the film was not subtitled Bosnian->Serbian. They assumed everyone in Belgrade can understand Bosnian.
Imamović is from Sarajevo, he talked about the film, listeners were calling in and talking to him. There was no trouble in understanding at all. I listened to all of it, so it was part Bosnian, part Serbian, and I understood it all.
Also, just this morning, over my tea, I was reading Croatian weekly Feral Tribune (http://feral.mediaturtle.com/), and among other articles, which were all writen in Croatian, I read this: http://feral.mediaturtle.com/look/weekly1/article.tpl?IdLanguage=7&IdPub... article by Petar Luković, who is writing in Serbian (if I am not mistaken, he is from Serbia and lives there). I read most of this edition of Feral Tribune, and I understood both stuff in Croatian, and stuff written by the Serbian author. If Luković was not writing about politics in Serbia, I would probably never notice that I am reading two oh so different languages.
Some time ago, in Serbian daily Danas (www.danas.co.yu), which unfortunately doesn't keep archives from more than few days, I read an article from Croatian Novi List (http://www.novilist.hr/), which was in its original form, so - Croatian. Iirc (they often use Novi List's articles), this one was regarding arrest of Ante Gotovina.
And just moments ago, I wanted to check the result of basketball game between Partizan (Serbia) and Bosna ASA BHT (Bosnia), so I went to http://goodyear.adriaticbasket.com/. I wanted to get details of the game, as I am a fan and couldn't watch it, so I went to their discussion forum topic: http://forum.adriaticbasket.net/viewtopic.php?t=4794 ... where fans of both Bosna and Partizan were commenting the game as it was progressing - with usual fan teasing (ok, teasing is a weak word). Nobody called for a dictionary.
Cheers, Dejan
P.S. Partizan won, if anyone cares.
That's all great. Nobody said anything about dictionaries. I just stated that some people might have harder time properly understanding each and every word.
And by the way, I don't think that you should be the one to judge here. You don't claim to be neither a Bosnian, nor Serb, nor a Croat, and you play a major role in SH wiki, which all leads me to believe that you're biased when talking about these languages. Kudos to you for being able to comprehend everything and actually not being able to tell the difference between two obviously different languages, but you are a rare specimen.
And regarding that Bosnian producer, I'm sure he "adjusted" his choice of words for the occasion. You don't wanna feel unwelcome and misunderstood when you're being a guest at a friendly party, now do you?
The difference is not that big a deal, as is the political connotation every "foreigner" forgets to bare in mind. Like Millosh said, there would be no community, should the 4 pedias merge. Hence, since there are 3 wikipedias that basically substitute the Serbocroatian one, the need for the latter has become inexistent.
Cheers! :)
Dejan Cabrilo wrote:
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.
True that many people don't know Croatian words for months. That's why in casual conversation, we either use international names or just number them.
Funny you should say that Bosnian is hard to understand. Few weeks ago, a Bosnian film "Go West" was shown in Belgrade, and it's producer Ahmed Imamović was a guest on Belgrade radio station B92. Of course, the film was not subtitled Bosnian->Serbian. They assumed everyone in Belgrade can understand Bosnian.
Imamović is from Sarajevo, he talked about the film, listeners were calling in and talking to him. There was no trouble in understanding at all. I listened to all of it, so it was part Bosnian, part Serbian, and I understood it all.
Also, just this morning, over my tea, I was reading Croatian weekly Feral Tribune (http://feral.mediaturtle.com/), and among other articles, which were all writen in Croatian, I read this: http://feral.mediaturtle.com/look/weekly1/article.tpl?IdLanguage=7&IdPub... article by Petar Luković, who is writing in Serbian (if I am not mistaken, he is from Serbia and lives there). I read most of this edition of Feral Tribune, and I understood both stuff in Croatian, and stuff written by the Serbian author. If Luković was not writing about politics in Serbia, I would probably never notice that I am reading two oh so different languages.
Some time ago, in Serbian daily Danas (www.danas.co.yu), which unfortunately doesn't keep archives from more than few days, I read an article from Croatian Novi List (http://www.novilist.hr/), which was in its original form, so - Croatian. Iirc (they often use Novi List's articles), this one was regarding arrest of Ante Gotovina.
And just moments ago, I wanted to check the result of basketball game between Partizan (Serbia) and Bosna ASA BHT (Bosnia), so I went to http://goodyear.adriaticbasket.com/. I wanted to get details of the game, as I am a fan and couldn't watch it, so I went to their discussion forum topic: http://forum.adriaticbasket.net/viewtopic.php?t=4794 ... where fans of both Bosna and Partizan were commenting the game as it was progressing - with usual fan teasing (ok, teasing is a weak word). Nobody called for a dictionary.
Cheers, Dejan
P.S. Partizan won, if anyone cares.
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That's all great. Nobody said anything about dictionaries. I just stated that some people might have harder time properly understanding each and every word.
Same with British and American, European Portugese and Brazilian, European Spanish and Mexican. Yet all of them share the same Wikipedias.
Ausir
Filip Maljkovic wrote:
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.
If absolutely nobody wanted an sh-Wikipedia we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
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.
Since when does some silly war solve anything?
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.
My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see Serbo-Croatian as one language.
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.
Unlike Mav, I do not support an imposed merger of these projects. It might be nice if they did, but I don't see anything realistic about that possibility.
SH is holding up because less than a handful of people are "contributing" to it.
That's an apparent fact.
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.
If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a natural death. As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive. Once we are sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the life support systems.
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?
Sometimes people outside are able to look at such situations in a more detached way. "Democracy in America" (written in 1832) was one of the best analyses of what can go wrong with the American system, but it was written by a Frenchman.
*Every problem in the world will get solved the minute someone from the outside stops meddling!*
The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
If absolutely nobody wanted an sh-Wikipedia we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
No one said anything about anything being absolute. Nothing's absolute. There are some hotheads and you know the story...
Since when does some silly war solve anything?
Maybe if people like you didn't call it silly, people would start to appreciate the Balkans. Expressions like "silly war" may be offensive to some people (not to me, because I'm politically neutral), and some people may be outraged. Do you have any idea how many lives were lost and how many were jeopardized? Do you know how it is to live through a war? That war had A LOT of influence and you can't just step over it.
My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see Serbo-Croatian as one language.
Exactly. They weren't here when the stuff happened. These refugees/people who moved away differ and, while some claim that they "still see Serbo-Croatian as one language", how many of them actually "speak" it? The views are different, but statistics support something pretty obvious.
If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a natural death. As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive. Once we are sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the life support systems.
Does policy like that actually exist? I am, frankly, not aware of that.
The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.
Like a proverb from these areas says: /Klin se klinom izbija/! (I can't really find a substitute in English ATM)
Cheers. :)
Filip Maljkovic wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Since when does some silly war solve anything?
Maybe if people like you didn't call it silly, people would start to appreciate the Balkans. Expressions like "silly war" may be offensive to some people (not to me, because I'm politically neutral), and some people may be outraged. Do you have any idea how many lives were lost and how many were jeopardized? Do you know how it is to live through a war? That war had A LOT of influence and you can't just step over it.
The influence of the wars (treating it as more than one, and not just talking about the one over Kosovo) is bound to have an effect on people's lives, but certainly the fact that so many were killed for no good reason is a big part of the silliness.
My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see Serbo-Croatian as one language.
Exactly. They weren't here when the stuff happened. These refugees/people who moved away differ and, while some claim that they "still see Serbo-Croatian as one language", how many of them actually "speak" it? The views are different, but statistics support something pretty obvious.
Most of them continue to speak their language. That's normal in most immigrant communities. Language is not usually lost until the generation of their grandchildren. The process takes maybe 50 years.
If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a natural death. As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive. Once we are sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the life support systems.
Does policy like that actually exist? I am, frankly, not aware of that.
I didn't say anything about policy. I was just commenting on human nature.
The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.
Like a proverb from these areas says: /Klin se klinom izbija/! (I can't really find a substitute in English ATM)
My sh-en dictionary (from-1982 :-) ) had this expression.as "one nail drives out another". Literal translations never convey the full meaning for this sort of thing.
It seems to me that many wrong beliefs (IMO) have been presented here (not only talking to you, Ray). If non-speakers decide what's best for all of us, then we may not have other options than to just stick to it. But this is very wrong. Comparing English and SH is unproportional because the differences between e.g. Serbian and Croatian are much bigger. Leaving SH alone means leaving a fork to grow unnaturally with a couple of editors that are going to keep on copy/pasting from around. If Wikimedia supports that and if you have no problems with the doubled work of a non-existent language, then I don't know what to say else. I'm disgusted by the public awareness outside the Balkans. It just proves that you have no idea what it's like here.
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Filip Maljkovic wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Since when does some silly war solve anything?
Maybe if people like you didn't call it silly, people would start to appreciate the Balkans. Expressions like "silly war" may be offensive to some people (not to me, because I'm politically neutral), and some people may be outraged. Do you have any idea how many lives were lost and how many were jeopardized? Do you know how it is to live through a war? That war had A LOT of influence and you can't just step over it.
The influence of the wars (treating it as more than one, and not just talking about the one over Kosovo) is bound to have an effect on people's lives, but certainly the fact that so many were killed for no good reason is a big part of the silliness.
My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see Serbo-Croatian as one language.
Exactly. They weren't here when the stuff happened. These refugees/people who moved away differ and, while some claim that they "still see Serbo-Croatian as one language", how many of them actually "speak" it? The views are different, but statistics support something pretty obvious.
Most of them continue to speak their language. That's normal in most immigrant communities. Language is not usually lost until the generation of their grandchildren. The process takes maybe 50 years.
If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a natural death. As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive. Once we are sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the life support systems.
Does policy like that actually exist? I am, frankly, not aware of that.
I didn't say anything about policy. I was just commenting on human nature.
The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.
Like a proverb from these areas says: /Klin se klinom izbija/! (I can't really find a substitute in English ATM)
My sh-en dictionary (from-1982 :-) ) had this expression.as "one nail drives out another". Literal translations never convey the full meaning for this sort of thing.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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.
ISO codes aren't really an indication what is a language and what isn't nowadays. After all, Moldovan language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language) also has an ISO code...
As for your translation to Croatian, it's similar to how an American most likely won't be able to write properly in British English - his English will be well understood by the Britons, of course, but it will still have noticable americanisms.
Ausir
FM> You just cannot force people to merge the knowledge after the FM> projects have been successful for a few years on their own. You'd FM> definitely get resistance and you'll just disrupt the Balkans FM> again. You'd do more damage than good.
Wasn't the original diskussion about shutting down sh? I cannot see why not doing so means to force people to work on it. If sh is active, is should stay. Same thing for bo, hr and sr. There is absolutely no need for a hurry. Let all these projects evolve for one or two decades and then decide about them.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160
- From the developer's list (wikitech-l), I found the following message:
Servien Ilaino wrote:
Sorry to say, but these developers are kind of useless, aren't developers supposed to "develop"... I haven't seen a new wiki for ages, no reactions from developers or whatever at all!
The Wikimedia Foundation board has refused to endorse the proposed policy for new language additions, so things are pretty much frozen until someone clarifies who has authority to do what and when.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Since it is now evident that new wikipedias are not possible for the time being (b.c. of the Foundation), what makes us certain that the Foundation will permit deletion of wikipedias at the current time? Is this even a profitable sdiscussion to be having, especially when it seems to give rise to some pretty powerful emotions in people?
Sincerely, Silas Snider [[en:User:Simonfairfax|Silas Snider]] ([[en:User talk:Simonfairfax|talk]])
Moreover, they speak culturally and liguistically 3 different languages and it's sometimes hard for me to understand what Bosnians or Croats are saying just because of the diversity (I'm a Serb, by the way).
Ask Americans if they understand all Britons without any difficulty...
As I said on IRC, you're very wrong. I'm sorry to break it to you this way, but Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian ARE different languages, albeit mutually intelligible.
Isn't not being mutually intelligible the most important distinction between a language and a dialect (aside from having an army...)?
And the political conotation is way too big to neglect. People have chosen to have separate wikipedias: just look at the growth of the three in comparison to the "united one" (which is basically a fork). The three didn't come out of the SH for no reason.
So if a war broke out between two English-speaking countries or if we were just after such a war, we should divide English Wikipedia?
Ausir
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