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

Sat Dec 3 09:51:32 UTC 2005

On 03/12/05, Adrenalin <adrenalinup at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a shame for us to see our language written in cyrillic, our
> language have a latin provenance and even if USSR/Russia have tried to
> taught our latin based language to be written using cyrillic alphabet
> after get the independence in 1991 we have switch back to the Latin
> alphabet !

I've heard this before, and I must say, it's just plain wrong. Before
switching back to Cyrillic, Moldovan had only used Latin for a period
of approximately 80 years (compared to centuries of writing in
Cyrillic including many great literary works), and Latin wasn't
universal until the very end of that period.

Also, the Soviets switched Moldovan to being written in Latin for
about a decade.

Now, as I noted earlier, Wikipedia does not care about what language
is official and such. We have an Occitan WP, for example, even though
Occitan is the official language of no country.

> And after so many years(14 years i think is enough) we see on the
> worlds biggest free encyclopedia what some one thought what moldovian
> language are still written ussing cyrillic alphabet ?

I've already explained it to you, and you seem to've ignored it. As
any Moldovan should know, there are still people who use Cyrillic.
Besides being the official script of Transnistria where it is in daily
use, it is still the only script understandable by thousands of
Moldovan rural peasants who were educated in the Soviet era.

> If you'll take the ip of the ppl who have doing mo.. you'll see what
> no one are from Moldova, they must be from Russian and maybe from the
> separatist Transnistria.

It's quite clear where the more prolific contributors are from. 1 from
Russia, one from Belarus, one from Romania, _two from Moldova_... etc.

> And who the hell on the main wikipedia page(http://www.wikipedia.org/)
> have written OUR name language using cyrillic ? "Молдовеняскэ" ? I
> just can't believe !

When the mo.wiki reached 100 articles, it was added to that page. The
Interwiki name is in Cyrillic because the content of that WP is in
Cyrillic.

Anybody who wants content in Latin will click on "Româna" which is
listed much earlier, or they will see the notice at Moldovan Wikipedia
-- on the top of every page, in bold letters! -- which tells them that
if they want to see Wikipedia in Latin alphabet, the official alphabet
of Rep. Moldova, to go to the Romanian WP, and it has a link.

> Or you on wikipedia don't have any rules ? Anyone can come to you and
> write the name of some language in whatever mode he want ?

Wikipedia is not ruled by the government of any nation. For this
reason, Kurds in Turkey are free to write pages in Kurdish, even
though it's not allowed according to Turkish government. Tatar WP is
written in Latin alphabet, even though the Russian government says it
has to be written in Cyrillic. The Chinese WP has many articles the
government doesn't like.

The reason for the existance of such a Wikipedia is that it is helpful
to some population. Do you advocate that we ignore these people just
because they'd rather read Cyrillic than Latin??

> I'm sure I'm not the last one who will complain about this, you'll
> have more and more protests.

There've already been many protests. But nearly all of them came from
Romanians. I posted to Planetamoldova about it a while back, and the
response was mixed. Some people were angry, some people thought it was
funny, but there were people there who thought it was a good thing,
and even one person who said that it makes sense to write Moldovan in
Cyrillic for historical reasons.

> Moldovian language are written using latin alphabet. If you want to

If that's the case, why is mo.wp written in Cyrillic? When I write
articles there, I use Cyrillic. So don't tell me that Moldovan is
written in Latin. Maybe you write Moldovan in Latin, but there are
some people who don't.

> create a new language, DON'T USE MO INITIALS ! DON'T USE OUR NAME !

Do you presume to speak for all citizens of Republica Moldova,
including people living east of the Nistru?

If you honestly believe that every man, woman, and child in Moldova is
against Cyrillic for Moldovan, please, be my guest, comission a
national census and ask all of the people.

But it's very clear what you'll find -- there are many people who
would rather write in Cyrillic, and there are even some people who
can't read Latin at all. What about them? Don't they have a right to
be able to read Wikipedia??

> Don't misinform the international community about our language.

The "international community" doesn't seem to care a lot about
mo.wiki. Most of the people who have taken any interest are Romanians
and Moldovans.

> (and i don't care who first start mo.wikipedia, if you use mo initials
> then respect the language rules, that's all.)

The Moldovan Academy of Sciences says this language is written in
Latin. But as I noted before, Wikipedia does not serve at the pleasure
of any national government or even regulatory institutions.

Cu respect,
M

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin