[Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan, are written in cyrillic ?

Mon Dec 5 17:55:57 UTC 2005

>  - When an internet user from the Republic of Moldova visits Wikipedia's homepage, he finds
>  among others links to Wikipedia editions in "Român&#259;" and in "Moldoveneasc&#259;".
>
>  - There are people who think that Moldovan is a distinct language. There are people who think that Moldovan is simply different name for the Romanian. Everybody knows however that both
>  Romanian and Moldovan are generally written in Latin script.
>
>  - Nevertheless,  on Wikipedia's homepage "Moldoveneasc&#259;" in not written in Latin script, like the Moldovan society has determined but in Cyrillic script like it was decreed in the unfree days of the Soviet union when the people of Moldova was not allowed to decide for themselves.
>
>  - This gives the Moldovan internet user a bad impression of Wikipedia and irritates him or her because they can think that Wikipedia ignores what the independent nation of Moldova decides and rather goes by the standard from the Soviet era.
>
>  - Now, if that user clicks on that cyrillic "Moldoveneasc&#259;", he is taken to a page that tells him to make a decision if he prefers the Latin or the Cyrillic script.
>
>  - What happens next is the following: If that user choses Latin (i. e. the standard script), he is told that his language is now considered Romanian by Wikipedia and taken to the Romanian Wikipedia. If, however the user should decide for some reason that he prefers Cyrillic (official script during the Soviet era),  Wikipedia  _now_  considers  his language Moldovan and he is taken to a Wikipedia named "Moldoveneasc&#259;".
>
>  - And finally he realizes that this wiki that uses the Soviet standard which became suspended one and a half decades ago is given the subdomain "mo" (code reserved for Moldovan which is by default written in Latin script) by Wikipedia!
>
>  Now I would like ask everybody who has had the patience to read this far:
>
>  Is there anybody who does _not_ understand why a large number of users from the region are upset by this weird arrangement?
>
>  When, a few weeks ago, a couple of Wikipedians from the former Yugoslavia were telling us that they were feeling insulted and offended by the mere existence of an edition in Serbo-Croatian I was not able to comprehend that.
>
>  But I do understand the irritation here and think it is well-justified.
>
>  In a nutshell, Wikipedia currently delivers this message to users from Moldova:
>  "If you're using the Latin script (like your national constitution says and like the majority of your compatriots do) we'll call your language Romanian but in case you should use Cyrillic, then we'll consider your language Moldovan".
>

I believe Arbeo's description of the current situation is quite
accurate. As a Moldovan I feel - let us say - upset when viewing
Wikipedia present Moldova as a reminiscent of the USSR. What upsets me
most is when, in a foreign country, I am almost as a rule obliged to
explain that I am not Russian. That contrary to Ukrainians or
Belorussians, we are not descendants of Slavic People. That we are not
native speakers of Russian (even though there are a lot of us who
freely speak and others that master it). That we speak Romanian.
Although I consider myself Moldovan, I have Romanian origins. I am
somehow trapped between both.

In Moldova we are not using Cyrillic script from ages (as it was
mentioned, one decade and a half ago it was abolished). As soon as we
got our independence, we got Cyrillic Moldovan changed for Romanian
written with Latin script. Nowadays, in Moldova Cyrillic script is
used only for Russian. There are no newspapers in "Cyrillic Moldovan".
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page is one of the rare pages on the
net containing "Cyrillic Moldovan". Television journalists are
desperately trying to present news or whatever using a correct and
fluent Romanian (following Romanian guidelines of usage; as there are
no such Moldovan guidelines). All the official documentation is in
Romanian. Yes, we may call it Moldovan, there, in the Government, but
I personally know a reviser working in the Moldovan Government that
uses the Explicative Dictionary of the Romanian Language (Dictionarul
Explicativ al limbii Romane) in order to edit official documentation.
This is just because we do not have Moldovan Explicative Dictionaries.
They do not exist  (not to my knowledge). There are few intelligent
enough to publish such pearls. We have tried even to publish a
Moldovan - Romanian Dictionary (Dictionarul Moldovenesc-Romanesc);
even this, not taking into account all the aberrations that it
contained - a very good collection of archaisms, the least to say -,
it was not written in Cyrillic. It used plain Latin. So, apart from
retired people, that need to make a small note in their old telephone
book, or anything similar, I do not imagine myself people writing
Romanian with the Cyrillic script. OK, in villages, maybe, but only as
exceptions. Transnistria - there, like in good old Communist times, it
is imposed. I have seen news showing parents protesting against the
use of Cyrillic script in educational purposes (schools, manuals, etc)
and going to jail because of this. Otherwise, it is Russian that is
mainly used there: administration, radio, television, press and so on.

All this just to try to demonstrate that Cyrillic script is not used
in Moldova, or that at least it is by no means representative of
Moldova. I do not know what other examples to cite here.