[Wikipedia-l] Re: Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

Mon Jan 9 14:14:52 UTC 2006

> Caroline Ford wrote:
> 
> >But linguistically almost _the_ test of "what is a language" is mutual
> >comprehensibility.
> >
> A helpful tool, perhaps, but hardly the defining test. Consider the 
> Scandinavian languages.
> 
> I would venture that the linguistic relationship between 
> Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian is somewhat like the relationship between 
> Danish/Norwegian/Swedish was from the Kalmar Union to the 19th-century 
> period of romantic nationalism (after accounting for the increased 
> uniformity promoted in more modern times by the printing press and 
> universal education). The present differences are partly exaggerated for 
> political reasons, but the political side of the equation is also likely 
> to produce increasing distinguishability in a real sense over time. A 
> single Serbo-Croatian wiki might be the right choice if we thought 
> language was something frozen in place. If we conclude that languages 
> continue to evolve, separate wikis might ultimately be more appropriate. 
> In the interim, while this remains unsettled, I don't think it's 
> necessarily awful that we're working along both tracks simultaneously.
> 
> --Michael Snow

Thank you for inserting some wisdom into this discussion. Frankly, I'm
saddened by many knee-jerk responses along the lines of "Language x has
one wikipedia, why should it be any different with Croatian, Bosnian and
Serbian?". I can partly understand that, but I'd like to emphasize that
this is _not_ an initiative to split off British English from
English. English is not Croatian, Spanish is not Norwegian, Turkish is not
Russian. Languages differ in everything, including how close they are to
other languages.

I know a lot about American and British culture,
society etc., and this knowledge has also taught me to avoid
assumptions and quick judgements about other cultures and to accept the
actions and judgements of those closest to the problems as most probably
right - that you should not be telling other people that they are silly,
you should try to _understand why_ are they doing what they're doing.

The existence of Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia at this point in time probably
has as much purpose as the existence of Norwegian-Danish Wikipedia.
Real Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia already exists elsewhere - it is Serbian,
Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia taken together, with cooperations, article
translations and mutual help on various things, all increasing in frequency.
It is my hope that the three Wikipedias will grow and develop along the Scandinavian model, with
common featured articles and interwiki links,
and also with reasonable people, speakers of all three languages,
acting in good faith to improve NPOV on all languages (as has already
happened on several occasions). It is on this foundation that Wikipedias
should evolve, not on forced unifications and mass verbatim copying
of articles to a common dumping ground.

Elephantus

from Croatian Wikipedia

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