Hi,
I'm sorry but it seems that Berto have got some wrong information.
I hope this message will be read carefully by all subscribers of this
list, including those who made the controversial decision.
It seems
unusual that such an orthography
can be used enough to have this level of recognition (to the extent
that it displaces the formal orthography) and yet not be recognised by
the standard.
The only level of recognition this ortography had was a wiki. There
*might* be a Linux locale in the future, but that's not a recognition.
I
don't know anything about Linux locale, but this wiki is just one of
thousands resources in this orthography. Yes, classical version
doesn't have its own Language Institute due to political issues, but
it is recognized; there are regular printed newspapers, recognized by
government in this grammar; big number of books in this grammar are
printed yearly (including fiction and scientific). Vast majority of
sites and blogs are created in classical version (I don't have
specific statistics, but rough count allows to say that around 80-90%
of all Belarusian language sites and almost 100% of Belarusian
language blogs are in classical version). It is not recognized by ISO
yet just because nobody here in Belarus knew that it could be
necessary; lack of ISO code never was an obstacle to use the language.
It is codified thoroughly; there are reference books, textbooks,
primers in it; big orthographic dictionaries exist, and cross-language
dictionaries as well.
A double standard would be usable if both version
where recognized at international level, yet they are not and there is no apparent chance
for such a recognition. If this claim was accepted we would have no way to keep anyone
from asking (say) a Quaker wikipedia based on what's survived of that language in
Melville's work, another in runic script, etc. This is absolutely NOT acceptable.
It is just speculation. There are no obstacles to classical version
being recognized at international level. Some languages which are not
codified, and are spoken just by hundreds of people are recognized;
and this language is codified, has strict rules, and is actively used
by approx. 50-100 thousand people.
I understand that people have worked for this and no
one says their work will be deleted, what is in discussion is whether it should be hosted
by wmf or not. If and when an Arbitration Committee chooses for a NO the existing content
will obviously be handed over to the Community, so that they can host it where they
please. This is not the Holy Inquisition, Gestapo or NKVD, we don't burn books in
public squares.
Thanks, really. But the main point is that this content is free
encyclopedic content, it is strongly crosslinked to other wmf projects
(interwiki, commons pics, mediawiki software and so on), and it seems
that there is no other competitive projects where this content could
be usefully hosted and worked on.
Has the
Norwegian solution been considered (seperate Bokmål and
Nynorsk Wikipedias) as a soltution to the Belarussian problem?
If they get an ISO
recognition they will obviously be hosted as anyone else, but not until then. We
absolutely exclude becoming a place in which linguistic codes get issued, because this is
not wmf mission.
Thanks for this point. I hope ISO code will be issued in nearby future
and Norwegian solution will be possible.
Thank you.
---
Monk, native Belarusian speaker, who can use both grammar systems, and
who is clearly against the discrimination of living natural language
in Wikipedia.