[Foundation-l] Future fate of Siberian Wikipedia

Thu Aug 2 18:41:35 UTC 2007

"Thomas Goldammer" <thogol at googlemail.com>
writes:

[...]

> I don't find anything about a Siberian Russian language (or dialect,
> if you like that term) in official materials about languages.

> For example, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90707
> Ethnologue lists 4 eastern Slavic languages, all of them are well
> known and do not include Siberian Russian.
>
> The specific language entry of Russian
> (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus) names two
> dialects, Northern and Southern Russian. According to first language
> speakers I asked this seems to be not a very good subdivision, but
> all of them denied that there is a specific Siberian dialect. 

The base of Zolotar'ev's languge is indeed the Northern dialect. Even
though the "Sibirskoi govor" as a whole is an invention, it is true
that the Northern dialect is quite distinct from Central and Southern
Russian. Notable features include presense of a postpositive article
(e.g. "zemlia-ta" "earth-the") some very odd grammatical constructions
and peculiar phonetics. You can find all of these features represented
in ru-sib. So it is not 100% made-up. In modern Russia, this dialect is
accutely threatened by extinction and I believe that it is preserved
only in very remote places of the North of European Russia.

In the Asian part, Old Settlers, whose ancestors settled eastwards of
the Urals since the 16th centuries are likely to have preserved the
Northern accent and developed their own regional variants. Some of
this appears to have been recorded by researchers of Tomsk State
University. (TSU) I don't have any idea, how distinct Siberian
variants of the Northern dialect may have been. However, they may have
existed, even though I believe they are virtually or completely
extinct today.

As I said, this research has been undertaken in Tomsk, the city where
Zolotar'ev lives. The authors of a report in the Russian online
journal "bolshoi gorod"[1] asked a leading linguist at Tomsk State
University for their opinion on Zolotarev's "Siberian language", and
their verdict was devastating. As I wrote above, they confirmed that
Zolotarev got some aspects right, including the peculiar Northern
phonetics, most of the rest was just was just invented or taken from
god knows where. 

> Maybe some first language speakers of Russian who read this list can
>say something more about that.
>
> My personal observation is that [[ru-sib:User:YaroslavZolotaryov]] is
> a kind of king of the project. And if I see things like
> http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Словник I doubt that this
> can be called encyclopedic content. There are lessons for learners of
> "Siberian", for instance
> http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/wiki/Тринацатой_шолныш_C_Чо_сварить.
> (translated: 13th chapter - what to learn) I think Zolotaryov wants to
> introduce his artifical Russian dialect to other people, 

[...]

yes, of course, for him, the ru-sib Wiki is a tool to popularise his
personal project. In the above referred article he is cited saying:

,----
| «Википедии» на редких, вымерших и искус
| ственных языках сохраняют знания о дан
| ном языке»,
`----

("Wikipedias in rare, extinct and artificial languages preserve
knowlege about the given language")

Creating an encyclopaedia in the sense of "a comprehensive written
compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a
particular branch of knowledge" is clearly not among his goals.

> which is clearly Original Research. 

More so when he uploads insulting poems as examples for the language,
which have been written by himself and not published anywhere else.[2]

> In my opinion this project should be moved to Wikia asap.

That is exactly what I think.

Thanks,

Johannes

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://www.bg.ru/article/6539/

[2]  http://ru-sib.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%87

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