I feel that's a very inaccurate representation of
the Romanian point of view
on this proposed transliteration. What must be understood is that Cyrillic
is controversial for Romanian simply because of historical context. This
can't be discounted, and I think people should a bit more sensitive to this
issue. It doesn't compare with Devanagari for English or, say, Arabic script
for Swedish. But the point is that even those Wikipedias would never be
accepted.
Ronline, you're speaking from a very idealistic place. In your world,
gays, gypsies, and Jews are all accepted as equals by Romanians. But
the reality is, many Romanians do not share these ideals with you.
*You* may not have a burning hatred for anything Russian, but it's
clear many Romanians do.
Case in point -- if there were an English WP in Devanagari, no
Americans would go to the lengths Romanians have gone to to campaign
for its closure. The attitude would be, "It's a bit ridiculous, but
why should we care?"
So much time has been spent on the Moldovan Wikipedia that it's
apparent many Romanians do care about the issue, and it's also very
clear that they have a burning hatred for anything Russian,
considering the fact that I have been called "Russian" (in Romanian)
as an insult by Romanians, which doesn't make a lot of sense -- I'm
certainly not Russian, but I'm not sure why it should be used as an
insult. Are Russians evil demons or something??
In any case - Mark seems to believe that Romanians
have a "burning hatred"
for anything Russian, including Cyrillic. This is definitely not the case.
Rather, the writing of Romanian in Cyrillic is something that is not
performed by any Romanians, bar a series of people who declare themselves
ethnic Moldovans in an unrecognised state. For that reason, implementing a
conversion script touches on people's sensitivities. The Latin script is a
link that Romania has to the rest of the Western world. Using a Cyrillic
script that would be treated on par with Latin implies a sort of Cyrillic
hegemony for most of Romanians and Moldovans, and serves as a painful
reminder for the times when people in the Moldovan SSR were forced to learn
the language using Cyrillic characters.
"Forced to learn the language using Cyrillic characters" is a phrase I
have seen used almost exclusively by Romanians. Moldovans just speak
of a script change, of reversion to Latin script. These people had
much more important things to worry about at the time than what script
they wrote in. Even during perestroica, there were no protests to
revert to Latin -- the MSSR gov't simply did that without any sort of
popular outcry.
* The Kurdish Wikipedia uses both Arabic and Latin
script, but there is no
conversion. This, IMO, is quite a messy approach. Either have two separate
Wikipedias (there's nothing wrong with that), or imply automatic conversion.
The main problem is Kurdish dialects. They are largely mutually
unintelligible, and are also divided along the lines of script. Sorani
and Gorani usually use Arabic, Kurmanji and Zazaki usually use Latin.
* The Tatar Wikipedia uses the Latin script, which is
non-official, yet
there is no content at all in Cyrillic. There is no clear policy on this
(ideally, conversion should be implemented).
Actually, while I was troubled by this for a while, I found out that
Latin is the official script for Tatar in Tatarstan. This is in
conflict with the fact that Cyrillic is, by a recent national law, the
official script for all languages of the Russian Federation, however,
the Tatar law still exists and Tatars themselves seem to be embracing
Latin.
* Automatic conversion is messy. For example, the
Serbian Wikipedia
continues to be Cyrillic-default, and one must switch to Latin everytime (
i.e. when a link is clicked from a Latin page, it still takes you to the
Cyrillic version). AFAIK, pages also can't be edited in Latin. I presume
this is the case for the Chinese WP as well.
When you edit, the existing content is not converted, no. However, you
can add new content in Latin. Same at zh.wp, except that it chooses
one script or the other based on your IP range and cookies.
Mark