Hi all,
I have been asked to advocate for the creation of a Zlatiborian Wikipedia.
However, it seems that the status of Zlatiborian as a language is in question. Apparently, non-Zlatiborian Serbians assert it is not a language, or even a dialect, but an accent.
The relevant message on my talkpage is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Node_ue#Differences_between_Zlatibori...
Obviously, that's not much information, but I hope that some people can give their opinions here.
Mark
He seems to implying the main differences are in pronunciation:
"Zlatiborian uses the Ijekavian pronounce, while Serbian uses the Ekavian. [...] Most of Zlatiborian words are differently stressed than Serbian.
This isn't relevant to Wikipedia since it's only written, not spoken. Where projects are moving towards spoken versions ([[meta:Wikisound]]), there's no reason to not record multiple versions with different pronunciations.
Angela.
From: Angela beesley@gmail.com
He seems to implying the main differences are in pronunciation:
"Zlatiborian uses the Ijekavian pronounce, while Serbian uses the Ekavian. [...] Most of Zlatiborian words are differently stressed than Serbian.
This isn't relevant to Wikipedia since it's only written, not spoken. Where projects are moving towards spoken versions ([[meta:Wikisound]]), there's no reason to not record multiple versions with different pronunciations.
You can write any difference in pronunciation, except the really minor ones. How big are the differences? Are the dialect groups mutually intelligible? Are the differences comparable with English proper and London dialect? English and Scots? Spanish and Portuguese? We must know that to judge whether or not this Zlatiborian can get a Wikipedia on its own.
Wouter
_________________________________________________________________ MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/
Unforunately I do not know this.
George claims that they are different; people from sr.wiki are claiming they are not. It's difficult to separate the opinions here.
Also, there is an unfortunate lack of material on Zlatiborian, and even on Serbian regional differences, so unlike a case such as Triestin vs Venet or Baseldytsch vs Alemannisch, it is hard to come up with the answers.
Mark
On 12/07/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Angela beesley@gmail.com
He seems to implying the main differences are in pronunciation:
"Zlatiborian uses the Ijekavian pronounce, while Serbian uses the Ekavian. [...] Most of Zlatiborian words are differently stressed than Serbian.
This isn't relevant to Wikipedia since it's only written, not spoken. Where projects are moving towards spoken versions ([[meta:Wikisound]]), there's no reason to not record multiple versions with different pronunciations.
You can write any difference in pronunciation, except the really minor ones. How big are the differences? Are the dialect groups mutually intelligible? Are the differences comparable with English proper and London dialect? English and Scots? Spanish and Portuguese? We must know that to judge whether or not this Zlatiborian can get a Wikipedia on its own.
Wouter
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/
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On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I have been asked to advocate for the creation of a Zlatiborian Wikipedia.
I am a native speaker of the Serbian language (actually, I would say that I speak Serbocroatian, but many can take that as a political statement. Let's just say that my native language class in school was called "The Serbian language") from Belgrade, and I would like to give my two cents on this.
I think that further balkanization of Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian etc. Wikipedias is just silly. The differences pointed out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Node_ue#Differences_between_Zlatibori...
.. may only go as far as Ijekavian vs. Ekavian. The difference is that in some words, "e" is substituted by "ije" or "je" (or the other way around of course). For example, mleko becomes mlijeko. "Ja mnogo volim mleko" would become "Ja mnogo volim mlijeko".
Some people in Serbia use Ijekavian, while the majority uses Ekavian. But, the fact is, we can understand each other perfectly well. We all listen to music, watch movies, possibly read books, etc. that use the dialect which we don't use personally, and of course, we communicate with people who speak in a different dialect, on daily bases. There are no problems to this whatsoever. I say tomato you say tomato, with added colour vs. color spelling difference kind of thing.
Pronunciation of words is different (different stresses, accent, etc.), but so is between people from Belgrade and people from Novi Sad, or New York and San Francisco (when I first went to New York, I couldn't understand anything, but they still spoke English and after a few hours, I got a hold of it).
As far as vocabulary differences pointed out on that page, that's just silly. All of these words are really synonyms in the Serbian language, and by no means are a set of words exclusive to certain regions. There are words in colloquial speech used in different parts of the country that are exclusive to one region, but it pretty much comes down to "soda" vs. "pop".
If you assume that all contributors to Wikipedia are literate people, who didn't spend their life in communicating only to their parents, then you can assume that a person from Zlatibor has no problems whatsoever communicating with people from Belgrade, and vice versa. It's one language! If two editors can't agree on whether to use, e.g. "regija" or "oblast" (example given in that link), then they are pushing such a strong POV that both of them should be banned for life from editing and possibly locked up with a key being thrown in an especially deep river.
Creating Zlatiborian Wikipedia would be... well, like creating a separate Wikipedia for New Zealand... Actually, no. Like creating a new edition for Wellington, New Zealand.
Dejan
P.S. I have to admit that I have never been to Zlatibor, but it is a popular tourist destination for people from Serbia, so many of my friends and relatives went there at one point. Friends told me about their skiing accidents, but never ever has somebody mentioned anything about the way locals speak. This is the first time that I hear of it.
A quick search of a couple of linguistic reference books turns up no trace of Zlatiborian, neither as a language nor as a dialect. Google finds all of 18 hits for "Zlatiborian", worldwide. And they are all from Wikipedia-related sites.
As Dejan said, Balkanization is probably what's going on here.
2005/7/12, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com:
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I have been asked to advocate for the creation of a Zlatiborian Wikipedia.
[...] Pronunciation of words is different (different stresses, accent, etc.), but so is between people from Belgrade and people from Novi Sad, or New York and San Francisco (when I first went to New York, I couldn't understand anything, but they still spoke English and after a few hours, I got a hold of it).[...]
Hi Dejan et al., It seems that the differences in dialects is even more minor than that between Castillian and Mexican varieties of Spanish, and yet http://es.wikipedia.org isn't divided into different spellings. I guess what would do it for me would be if the language were given it's own ISO tag. For example, Ladino is recognized as a separate language from Castilian Spanish even though it derives from it, but Andalusian is not, even though the accent and pronunciation differs from Standard (Castilian) Spanish. Ladino has its own ISO tag but Andalusian does not.
BTW it's time we set up the sub-domains for Ladino isn't it ;-) hint, hint!
With best regards to all, Jay B. en:User:ILVI
Jay, unfortunately chances are there will be no Ladino or Chinook Jargon Wikipedias until such time as they reach a level of support similar to that enjoyed by the Scots Wikipedia proposal or the Cebuano Wikipedia proposal.
Mark
On 13/07/05, ilooy ilooy.gaon@gmail.com wrote:
2005/7/12, Dejan Cabrilo dcabrilo@gmail.com:
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I have been asked to advocate for the creation of a Zlatiborian Wikipedia.
[...] Pronunciation of words is different (different stresses, accent, etc.), but so is between people from Belgrade and people from Novi Sad, or New York and San Francisco (when I first went to New York, I couldn't understand anything, but they still spoke English and after a few hours, I got a hold of it).[...]
Hi Dejan et al., It seems that the differences in dialects is even more minor than that between Castillian and Mexican varieties of Spanish, and yet http://es.wikipedia.org isn't divided into different spellings. I guess what would do it for me would be if the language were given it's own ISO tag. For example, Ladino is recognized as a separate language from Castilian Spanish even though it derives from it, but Andalusian is not, even though the accent and pronunciation differs from Standard (Castilian) Spanish. Ladino has its own ISO tag but Andalusian does not.
BTW it's time we set up the sub-domains for Ladino isn't it ;-) hint, hint!
With best regards to all, Jay B. en:User:ILVI _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
2005/7/13, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Jay, unfortunately chances are there will be no Ladino or Chinook Jargon Wikipedias until such time as they reach a level of support similar to that enjoyed by the Scots Wikipedia proposal or the Cebuano Wikipedia proposal.
Ah, I can see, Mark, that you said "unfortunately", and this I take to mean that fortunately we have an established procedure according to the page on meta which states that if there are five people that plan to support the wiki then it should be set up. Especially if the language is a natural tongue and it has an ISO tag. Well, both cases are good to go on Ladino. So fortunately it seems the case for foot-dragging would be moot concerning Ladino.
It should have its sub-domain and it should enjoy a good presence among the other languages in Wikisphere if we are to set up guidelines and these are to be followed, "que no"?
With regards always, Jay B. en:User:ILVI ilooy.gaon@gmail.com
Person who asked Zlatiborian Wikipedia made an article "Zlatiborian language" on English Wikipedia. It is a joke or the person is local-nationalist. Zlatiborian speech is one of the basis of standard Serbian and Croatian languages. So, there are no any differences. (It is the same as someone wants to make Boston Wikipedia in the sense of language.)
On 7/14/05, ilooy ilooy.gaon@gmail.com wrote:
2005/7/13, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Jay, unfortunately chances are there will be no Ladino or Chinook Jargon Wikipedias until such time as they reach a level of support similar to that enjoyed by the Scots Wikipedia proposal or the Cebuano Wikipedia proposal.
Ah, I can see, Mark, that you said "unfortunately", and this I take to mean that fortunately we have an established procedure according to the page on meta which states that if there are five people that plan to support the wiki then it should be set up. Especially if the language is a natural tongue and it has an ISO tag. Well, both cases are good to go on Ladino. So fortunately it seems the case for foot-dragging would be moot concerning Ladino.
It should have its sub-domain and it should enjoy a good presence among the other languages in Wikisphere if we are to set up guidelines and these are to be followed, "que no"?
With regards always, Jay B. en:User:ILVI ilooy.gaon@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Jay, by "unfortunately", I meant that I would like as much as you would to see a Wikipedia in Ladino and Chinook Jargon.
The same, however, cannot be said for everybody -- most people here believe in a strict system of checks and balances to make sure that we don't create new Wikipedias excessively.
There is no specific policy. Theoretically - and this is theoretically -- you could request a constructed language spoken by only one person, with no supporters for its creation, and even a statement that "Oh I just want it to exist, I'll never actually use it", and it would still be possible (in an alternate reality where the developers are entirely devoid of the proper decision-making skills, of course) for it to be created. It would not, technically, be against policy.
It would also not be against policy to have a request for a Wikipedia denied, where it had 3000 signatures in support of its creation, no opposition, an ISO code, millions of speakers, and a couple of hundred people committed to working on it.
However, keep in mind that these are both extremes, and neither is likely to ever actually happen. What they are there to demonstrate is that right now there __are no regulations__. If somebody told you there is a policy of 5 supporters, they are wrong. It is a *proposed* policy.
There are no concrete requirements. It seems to be entirely at the discretion of developers. And they, in turn, seem to be swayed by whether or not it is controversial, how much support it enjoys, and how likely it is that it will be active.
Tim Starling has proposed that it be a decision of the board, but so far it doesn't seem to be a real problem -- we haven't not created Wikipedias where people were nearly banging our doors down (Scots, Kapampangan, Cebuano, and Võro are possible examples), and we haven't created any Wikipedias that aren't active (note that this applies only from the period of the creation of the Friulian Wikipedia, forward; the previous round of creation saw Sicilian, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic; though the former two are quite active, and the latter has quite a bit of Gothic text, the Gothic Wikipedia is essentially inactive, although it occasionally grows in fits and starts).
I hate to say it, but Ladino is simply not a case of people banging our doors down, which seems to be the standard now. No native speaker has requested it. You are the only one to have manifested on the mailinglist. Only one article exists on the test Wikipedia. None of the additional votes of support were from within the Wikimedia community, and it certainly can't be verified whether they're real people.
Again, I would like to iterate: I want the Ladino Wikipedia to be created this very instant. I would not mind whether it was active or not, or how many supporters there were, or whether there were any native speakers. This sort of stuff doesn't worry me. But, it worries others, and they are the majority, and the majority is, in some way or another, in control here.
You have judged, based on the fact that you joined amid my posts about the Low Saxon Wikipedia, that I am an enemy of new Wikipedias, that I do not want them to be created.
In fact, I am despised for my annoying persistance for just the opposite. Among the languages for which I have (often incessantly) advocated are, Gothic, Old English, Võro, Amis, Old Greek, Old Norse, Cantonese, Shanghainese, a separate Traditional Chinese Wikipedia, and Wikipedias in a huge list of other languages. This is appreciated by some, but by far the reaction is one of just the opinion I described above.
This community has set the bar very high. The reason appears to be that it used to be much lower -- subdomains were created at anybody's request, on a whim. And we ended up with aa: (Afar), kk: (Kazakh), tg: (Tajik), and scores of other Wikipedias which are at best inactive and at worst completely empty. The Nauruan Wikipedia was in a mysterious conlang for a while. This was remedied -- sort of. Since there are still no Nauruans, it is now maintained by a group of people who are interested in Nauruan but don't actually know the language -- their entire knowledge is based on flipping back and forth in an outdated grammar book, using an old orthography, although they will assure you it is entirely up-to-date and correct. How many of them have been to Nauru? 0. Most are Europeans, including "Cars en Travel", aka "Belgian man", aka a number of other things, and "Cvddawguiasdmpss" (not sure of his exact username, but it looks a bit like that and probably starts with a C and ends with an S), the former of whom is, no surprise, Belgian, and the latter who is a Swissman with a German background, apparently of the city of Basel.
And, since we still have no Nauruans, they continue this. But now that it is in a semi-real Nauruan, there's not much anybody can do (when it was in a Romance conlang rather than even pseudo, semi-Nauruan, people were outraged, but they were calmed largely by the so-called "fixing").
The Dzongkha Wikipedia used to be in a false language. The mainpage was moved to "Gilst Ooli", which as far as I can tell means nothing in any language. Perhaps it's similar to the content I wrote at Test-wiki about Hilary Clinton, Ben Affleck, and others, in a humourous (if you look close enough, that is), pseudo-language that was really just keyboard smashing with the occasional planned insertion of content intended to make it hilarious to a small subset of the population of the world. Sadly, I am not able to retrieve it now, but I wish for the world that I were. But that is off-topic. The Dzongkha Wikipedia mainpage had text in some bizzare text, probably a pseudo-language of structured, careful construction but with no actual meaning attached to words (like mine at test-wiki).
This, too, shocked the public. I wish I'd never reported it -- that seems to be what sparked a great deal of the fire beneath the collective ass of the community.
You are welcome to search the archives of this mailinglist for the original discussions regarding this.
Also, having come in în the middle of the Low Saxon discussion/argument/fight/war, you would probably be surprised to hear: Netherlands Low Saxon is the first Wikipedia in a natural language I have explicitly opposed, since forever. When much of the rest of the community doubted, I enthusiastically supported new Wikipedias in Cantonese, Shanghainese, Old English, Gothic, Sicilian, Friulian, and droves of others.
Mark
On 13/07/05, ilooy ilooy.gaon@gmail.com wrote:
2005/7/13, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Jay, unfortunately chances are there will be no Ladino or Chinook Jargon Wikipedias until such time as they reach a level of support similar to that enjoyed by the Scots Wikipedia proposal or the Cebuano Wikipedia proposal.
Ah, I can see, Mark, that you said "unfortunately", and this I take to mean that fortunately we have an established procedure according to the page on meta which states that if there are five people that plan to support the wiki then it should be set up. Especially if the language is a natural tongue and it has an ISO tag. Well, both cases are good to go on Ladino. So fortunately it seems the case for foot-dragging would be moot concerning Ladino.
It should have its sub-domain and it should enjoy a good presence among the other languages in Wikisphere if we are to set up guidelines and these are to be followed, "que no"?
With regards always, Jay B. en:User:ILVI ilooy.gaon@gmail.com
On 7/14/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
However, keep in mind that these are both extremes, and neither is likely to ever actually happen. What they are there to demonstrate is that right now there __are no regulations__. If somebody told you there is a policy of 5 supporters, they are wrong. It is a *proposed* policy.
The page might claim it is only proposed, but in practice, it's the closest thing we have to a policy, so tends to be the one that is followed. I'm not aware of any recently created wikis that have not met this "proposed" policy. Policy is often derived from what actually happens, so in my view, the 5 supporters rule is, or is becoming through practice, the policy for creating new language Wikipedias.
Angela.
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