[Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[とある白い猫]

Hi all,

It is proposed that Kurdish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_language)
wikipedia (ku.wikipedia) be renamed to Kurmanji wikipedia (kmr.wikipedia) as
currently ku.wikipedia predominantly hosts a single dialect which is
Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. Local community oppose the proposal so far.

I'd like to explain some background behind the proposal. Kurdish wikipedia
had been hosting multiple dialects since its creation. The three main
dialects (in terms of article count) have been Zazaki (1.5–2.5 million
speakers), Sorani (5 million speakers) and Kurmanji (9 million speakers).
Zazaki is only mentioned here because it was hosted by Kurdish wikipedia at
some point. Zazaki's language family is controversial as some sources put it
as a dialect of Kurdish while others disagree with this. While details
surrounding the linguistic properties are irrelevant for this proposal,
the controversy itself is relevant.

Kurdish as a language has no standard from and the ISO considers ku (kur) to
be a language code for a macro-language for multiple dialects. Furthermore
said dialects are mutually unintelligible (per first Google hit:
http://www.thefellowship.info/Missions/Global-Missions/People-Groups/Kurds)
with multiple different types of scripts such as Sorani using rtl Arabic
script and Kurmanji using ltr latin script and are different in both grammar
and vocabulary. In addition Sorani is the only dialect used officially in
north of Iraq by the Kurdistan Regional Government and is not the most
common dialect of Kurdish (according to Wikipedia anyways).

   - Zazaki dialect separated from Kurdish Wikipedia on 5 January 2007 with
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Zazaki
and
   had been steadily having an increase in article count and will seemingly
   overtake ku.wikipedia soon enough.
   - Sorani dialect has seperated from Kurdish wikipedia on 14 November
   2010 with
   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kurdish_(Sorani)
and
   has steady contribution despite being a very recently created wiki.
   - Minor dialects (in terms of article count) hosted by Kurdish wikipedia
   already have their relevant incubator pages with Southern Kurdish created
   on 29 October 2009 (http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sdh)
   and Kirmanjki created on 30 July 2008 (
   http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kiu).

Currently ku.wikipedia has very few tagged articles in non-Kurmanji
dialects:

   -
   http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taybet:WhatLinksHere/%C5%9Eablon:Soran%C3%AE6
Sorani uses - There is a Sorani wikipedia
   -
   http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taybet:WhatLinksHere/%C5%9Eablon:Bi_kurdiya_ba%C5%9F%C3%BBr14
Southern Kurdish uses - There is an incubator entry for Southern
Kurdish
   -
   http://ku.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taybet:WhatLinksHere/%C5%9Eablon:Zazak%C3%AE&limit=6565
Zazaki uses - There is a Zazaki wikipedia

By keeping ku.wikipedia with its ku language code we are:

   - Implying Kurmanji as the "official" dialect of Kurdish with the Kurdish
   macro-language code
   - Implying Sorani as the lesser dialect when in fact it is the only
   official one.
   - Implying Zazaki to be a Kurdish dialect which Zazaki community
   opposes fiercely as evident in closed language proposal of Zazaki of 2007.
   - Confusing the reader whom visits ku.wikipedia only to find Kurdish
   articles they cannot read unless they use Kurmanji dialect (only half of
   Kurdish speakers know Kurmanji if you add up the numbers for all other
   dialects).
   - I'd like to highlight one remark from Sorani wiki proposal page: "Even
   though both "Kurmanj" and "Sorani" are subgroups (accent) of Kurdish
   language, they can cause of misunderstanding and misinterpretation for
   people who speak the language with these accents to each other. This can
   happen in different situations. For instance during regular conversations,
   or reading/understanding complex and professional contents.In general,
   "Kurmanj" and "Sorani" are not useful to each other since misinterpretation
   is so high while they are used in different places. --Marmzok 11 April 2009"
   - This is the problem the reader deals on an article by article basis unless
   they know the existence of Sorani wikipedia.

Relevant meta discussion is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Kurdish_2_Wikipedia

Might I remind that "The committee does not consider political differences,
since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free,
unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information
from the viewpoint of individual political communities." (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy#Requisites).
Therefore political arguments including the ones in the meta discussion are
irrelevant.

  - とある白い猫  (To Aru Shiroi Neko)