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

[Peter Gervai]

Mark,

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 10:01, Mark Williamson<node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I acknowledge that, but what do you want to say:
1) cyrillic form is used by the majority of speakers of Moldavian?
or
2) latin form is used by majority speakers but there is a small
minority who still uses cyrillic?

If first, I cannot see where that data come from. If second, then I
see no reason to make it the main, default form.

> 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.

Thos whole thread isnt' about debate, but a repeated request for
conversion for a long time now. For me it looks like IF it WAS a
historical language but nobody would have wanted to change it. I know
it isn't, it's just the same case for the original poster, and *we're*
debating about his language.

> 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 I see they're still minority speakers.

> 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.

You're the professional in this field so you ought not to leave
unnoticed the fact that many languages tend to move towards latin
script due to geopolitical reasons, and you cannot just say it's a
short-term political movement.

Somebody should look up the proper definition of the ISO code 'mo' I guess.

> 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,

Please observe the fact that I made a general comment about separatism
and not particularly about Transnistria. I happen to be Hungarian and
I could tell you about erasing Russian influence for a week, 8 hours a
day sessions. I guess most ex-occupied people around could educate you
about this subject as well. Generally.

As for Transnistria, I guess they're separated from Moldova because
Moldova wants to get away from Russia while Transnistria doesn't and
this quite explains both what you say and why Moldovans want to get
rid of cyrillic script. I'd say it's not polite not to recognise the
desire for Moldavian people (the majority speakers) in this case,
unless I'm misinformed, which is a quite valid possibility in this
case, since I do not know the opinion of the Moldavian people
(excluding Transnistrian people).

> 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.

Anyone ever provided some population percentage for these groups?
Maybe the poster is in a minority opinion group, maybe not. That's an
important question.

> As far as the Latin script goes that
> is considered a resolved issue outside of Transnistria however.

So it seems to me, but then you talk against your opinion. :-)

> 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,

I agree.

> rather on the simple facts of the
> situation... which unfortunately nobody can seem to agree on either.

For me it seems that majority of speakers use latin script, and the
official language definition declares latin script, and that Moldavian
people agree upon it as well.

I cannot say anything about Transnistrian language *smirk* which is
written in cyrillic script and used by majority of Transnistrian
people. mo-tr? ;)

Peter