[Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

Richard Farmbrough richard at farmbrough.co.uk
Thu Sep 22 16:38:33 UTC 2011


If there's along list, then it can get longer. :-)

And I'm not sure ar: is a parallel - ar: is generally MSA its relation 
to arz: is more like Received English's relation to other dialects  a 
member of the same family, rather than the language family as a whole 
which kur: is.  The situation is more as if the articles at ar: were 
almost all in arz:

And clearly we do not want inaccurately labelled wikis.

On 16/09/2011 15:23, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> The argument for or against using ku.wikipedia.org are interesting but at
> this time rather irrelevant.There is a long list of pending name changes
> waiting to happen. Also we are quite happy to keep codes that are in fact
> representing macro languages  like ar or Arabic.
> Thanks,
>       GerardM
>
> 2011/9/16 とある白い猫<to.aru.shiroi.neko at gmail.com>
>
>> 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)
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