[Foundation-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

[Mark Williamson]

This is incorrect. There are three different languages used as an
educational medium in *public* schools in Transnistria. It is up to
the parents of a child to choose which school to send their kids to -
Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, or bilingual.

Last I heard, there are also "Romanian" schools, but I am not certain
of their status.

To be certain, a majority of ethnic Moldovans in Transnistria are in
favor of separation/independence from the Republic of Moldova. This is
a fact that has been shown numerous times in various polls by several
organizations (including Western polling organizations). This fact is
often overlooked by people toeing the Moldovan party line of
"territorial integrity" and claiming that ethnic Moldovans are
oppressed or coerced or somehow unwilling participants in
Transnistria. Certainly, emigration has been high from the "country",
especially among ethnic Moldavians.

Somehow it seems that the loudest voices about oppression in
Transnistria come not from people who are from the area or who have
left it, but from Moldovan partisans. The issue of Latin-script
schools was certainly huge, but last I heard the schools continue to
operate although no longer with government funding. Clearly, if
parents object to their children being taught Cyrillic script in
school, they could send their kids to a Russian-medium school and
teach them Latin script Moldovan at home, or send them to a
Romanian-medium school (but I think they are overcrowded already), or
even leave the country.

But I think for the majority of parents of pupils in such schools (of
which there are many, many, many), script is simply not an issue, they
are more worried about putting food on the table than having petty
fights over how to write their language.

To be clear, my position would be to allow for the closing of mo.wp if
and ONLY if good read-write automatic conversion is implemented on
ro.wp _first_.

Mark

On 08/11/2007, Johannes Rohr <jorohr at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:18:26 +0100, GerardM wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > You are wrong, the Romanian Wikipedia is in the Latin script.. the
> > Moldovan is not, consequently your conclusion does not follow from your
> > argument. Thanks,
>
> While it is theoretically possible that there are individual speakers of
> Romanian/Moldovan in Transnistria who, due to the pro-Russian policy of
> the Transnistrian authorities read only Cyrillic Romanian, the likelihood
> is extremely small. As I understand, the contemporary use of Cyrillic for
> Moldovan/Romanian is a product of continued coercion in Transnistria.
>
> In my view, the main argument against the Moldovan Wikipedia is that it
> never had a native community. There is simply no demand from the side of
> Moldovans from either side of the Dniester river for such a wiki.
>
> Apart from that, I feel that the use of the mo language code is a misuse,
> as the standard alphabeth in Moldova is Latin, not Cyrillic.
>
> Apart from that, I am well aware, that Romanian has a history of being
> written in Cyrillic. I would even dare say, that the Latin script is a
> relatively new invention, as the Romanian ortodox church has historically
> used the cyrillic alphabeth well into the 19th centure, IIRC.
>
> However, I don't think that this warrants a separate Wikipedia edition,
> else we could also have a separate German editon in Fraktur script...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Johannes
>
>
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