[Foundation-l] Rename proposal of Kurdish wikipedia

[M. Williamson]

It's not irrelevant because if approved, it could be added to list of
pending name changes.

As far as codes representing macrolanguages, ku: is clearly a different
situation than ar.wp. Arabic is a group of languages with a single unifying
"macro" standard, which speakers of all Arabic languages learn in school.
Every speaker of any Arabic language - Iraqi, Egyptian, Lebanese, Moroccan,
etc. - will readily agree that Modern Standard Arabic is part of their
cultural and linguistic tradition. For this reason, the situation makes
sense.

This is decidedly not the case with ku. Unlike with ar.wp, there are 5
different languages with more or less equal status. There is no "Modern
Standard Kurdish". Imagine if Modern Standard Arabic didn't exist, and
Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia was housed at http://ar.wikipedia.org/ domain.
This would be unfair to other Arabic languages, would it not? Well, this is
the situation with Kurdish languages at the moment.

http://ku.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and almost all content in
Kurmanji language
http://ckb.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and all content in Sorani
language
http://diq.wikipedia.org/ : interface and mainpage and all content in Zazaki
language (which may or may not be a Kurdish language)
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sdh : Southern Kurdish
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kiu : Kirmanjki

Now, as White Cat already mentioned, it is simply not neutral for us to
imply, by housing the Kurmanji Wikipedia at the language code for "Kurdish",
that Kurmanji is the 'default' Kurdish, when this is not the case. In fact,
Sorani is the only variety of Kurdish that has official status in any
country, being the co-official language of Iraq. Also, in comparison with
your case (re:Arabic), Modern Standard Arabic (used at ar.wp) *is* the
'default' Arabic. So this is not a parallel situation and should not be
treated as such, and a technical backlog is no reason to ignore it.



2011/9/16 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>

> 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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