[Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday "Our romanian language" in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !

[Mark Williamson]

You seem to believe that Cyrillic for the language is a purely
historical artefact when in fact it is still used in textbooks for
schoolchildren and learning to read in Transnistria. If Cyrillic
script were no longer in use for Moldovan or used only as a historical
curiosity this would be a dead issue and I doubt anybody would put up
any debate.

As it is stated in the article, it is still the official script
according to the PMR. Whether you recognize them as a country or an
occupying force, it's undeniable that they do have _de facto_ control
over the vast majority of the land between the Nistru river and the
Ukrainian border and that in the Moldovan-medium schools in that area,
the Cyrillic script is mostly used (I believe there are 4 schools
using Latin script?)

As far as "declarations" and it being "declared" the Latin is the only
script used to write Moldovan, that's pretty meaningless in my book.
Governments over the centuries have tried to impose various linguistic
changes. Laws regarding language are not so relevant in our context.
For example, the Russian government has made a law requiring the use
of Cyrillic script for all languages in the territory of the
Federation... however, in our context, such a declaration is
absolutely meaningless. The situation on the ground, not in law books,
is what really matters.

As far as your second e-mail about people trying to erase Russian
influence, it's not so simple as you've made it seem. In Transnistria,
Russia is nearly universally seen as a force for good and there is
little desire among the ethnic Moldovan population there to de-Russify
anything. They fought a war over that essentially.

In (the rest of) Moldova, it's also not quite so simple. There are
some who believe that Moldovans are Romanians and that Moldova and
Romania should be united; there are others who believe Moldovans are
an independent peopel and the country should have a Russia-oriented
foreign policy; there are others still who believe Moldova should
separate itself from both sides. As far as the Latin script goes that
is considered a resolved issue outside of Transnistria however.

I don't think a decision of language should be made based on our
personal feelings about the former Soviet Union or Russia or empires
or colonism or socialism or Stalin, rather on the simple facts of the
situation... which unfortunately nobody can seem to agree on either.

Mark

On 9/1/09, Peter Gervai <grinapo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 08:59, Mark Williamson<node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>> When you say "that _is_ the _moldovan_ language"... how does Cyrillic
>> writing make it not Moldovan anymore?
>
> On the contarary: latin script make it not Moldovan language anymore.
>
> It's like saying old english (non latin script) should be used on enwp
> instead of latin, and people may possibly be sent to latin script,
> because how does old english scripting make it not english anymore?
> (Yeah sure I know, it's probably not the very same language anymore,
> but you may possibly see my point about what's defined as official
> language with any given name, and its history. If it has been declared
> that THE Moldavian is written in latin then cyrillic script isn't
> today's Moldavian language anymore. It is a historical language, like
> many converted from national to latin scripts in the recent decades.)
>
>> Also, there is a very clear
>> notice at the top directing people to Latin-alphabet content - it's
>> not as if anybody is actually deprived of being able to read in their
>> preferred script or is difficult to find.
>
> I ain't no Moldavian but I'd guess here the priorities are exchanged.
> Default should be latin script and it may direct anyone to historical
> spelling by cyrillic. And if there's one-to-one relation betwen
> cyrillic and latin script then we should make it automagic.
>
> Peter
>
> ps: I'm not against preserving cyrillic writing, but as it's been
> mentioned: it doesn't match the language code. should be at least
> renamed. as far as I see, which is maybe not much.
>
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