[Foundation-l] Future fate of Siberian Wikipedia

[Johannes Rohr]

"Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com>
writes:

> On 01/08/07, Johannes Rohr <jorohr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Still I'm not keen to fight over terms. What ever you call it,
>> "Sibirskoi govor" is not a vernacular, not a natural language. It
>> would not be understood by its alleged native speakers in the Russian
>> North, as much of its vocabulary is either constructed or borrowed
>> from other languages (and deliberately designed to be as distant from
>> standard Russian as possible).
>
> Of course it isn't a vernacular. That doesn't mean it isn't a natural
> language - there are several natural "standard" languages that aren't
> anybody's vernacular, or that weren't until very recently.
>
> I find your statement regarding intelligibility suspect. Please
> provide references to support it.

Almost all terms for modern terms are completely invented and do not
exist elsewhere. Just some examples from the main page: "mezhugigma"
("Internet"), "robotny vedy" (probably "natural sciences"),
"vseznaika" ("encyclopaedia"), "bashlykoznaisvo" ("management"),
"artelezaisvo" (probably "social science"), "mudrionozaisvo" (probably
"philosophy"). I could continue for quite a while but I'm afraid it
will get boring. However, the creator of the language has explicitely
stated this intention in his blog: 

,----
| "I don't think it will be too hard to construct a Siberian language,
| adding to chaldon's dialect grammar the required amount of Tatar
| roots, up to making the Siberian language unintelligible to European
| Russians. "[1].
`----

>> The simplest and most objective criteria we have is recognition by
>> relevant bodies external to Wikimedia. ru-sib has no iso code or other
>> form of external recognition, thus it clearly wouldn't be eligible
>> under the current language proposal policy. It is purely an Internet
>> phenomenon, propagated by a bunch of bloggers.
>
> Yes, but it doesn't make sense to me that we should close all existing
> Wikis that would not be created under the current policy. I feel that
> we should grandfather them in and treat proposed removals on a
> case-by-case basis.

When there are no issues, there is certainly no need to do
anything. But, alas, this is not the case here.

>> ...only in the sense that the aforementioned Wikis have probably less
>> or no offensive content, like referring to Russians as "Muscovite
>> scum" ("Moskal'ska svoloch"). Or which other substantial differences
>> do you see?
>
> First of all, that offending content is part of a poem used as an
> example of a certain author, or at least that is what I have been
> told.

A "poem" - what a lame pretext. This poem has been uploaded by its
very author, who is at the same time the creator of the language and
the founder and one of the administrators of this wiki. Gimmie a
break! There have been many pleas to take this page down. He has
consistently refused to do so.

Additionally, there are many articles, which are just as
non-encyclopaedic as this one. Take the article "Rosseia", ("Russia"),
which i.a. states that "the symbols of Russian mentality are Vodka and
herring" or Yaroslav Zolotaryov's original article on Alexander
Pushkin, where he described him as "Russian nigger and poet". N.b.:
This version has been written by the creator of the language, and
founder and administrator of the ru-sib Wikipedia.[2]

> Second of all, the differences are very great, and they lie in the
> intention of the respective languages: Toki Pona is intended as a
> simple international auxiliary language; Klingon is the language of a
> fictional race of aliens. Siberian, on the other hand, is intended to
> be a language for a specific geocultural group.

...if you call a bunch of bloggers at livejournal.com a "geocultural
group", maybe. So what? 

[...]

Thanks,

Johannes


Footnotes: 
[1] "Не думаю, что будет сложно сконструировать сибирский язык, залив в чалдонскую диалектную грамматику нужное количество татарских корней, вплоть до непонимания сибирского языка европейскими русскими." http://samir74.livejournal.com/2005/04/30/

[2]  http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD%2C_%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%80_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87&oldid=4587

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