Wiktionary talk:Votes/2011-10/Unified Romanian

Look and feel

I'd like to see what Romanian Cyrillic entries and translations are going to look like. Is it modelled on Serbo-Croatian? --Anatoli 07:25, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

It's up to the editors of Romanian to decide specific forms for entries and translations, but here's one possibility for Moldavian Cyrillic and standard Latin script. Entries from old texts in Cyrillic will be similar, but marked as archaic. - -sche (discuss) 08:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! --Anatoli 08:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Ric pointed out on my talk page that I had mixed up Moldov(i)an and Transnistrian. The "modern" Cyrillic spellings are Transnistrian, not Moldov(i)an (anymore). How's this for a (not-old) Cyrillic spelling, and this for an old Cyrillic spelling (linked-to from here)? I think all the spellings could have a usage note explaining the different alphabets used. The first parameter could tell the template which spelling the current entry was using, and other parameters might also the other alphabet forms to be specified. - -sche (discuss) 20:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm listing this on the main votes page so it gets more notice, but not setting a start-date for the vote yet. - -sche (discuss) 20:32, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

These varieties of Cyrillic spellings are very confusing and may be even more confusing for users and contributors (is this only valid for version 1,2,3?). I think, however, we will deal with one version most of the time - the one used in the Moldavian SSR and later on still kept by Transnistria (they are the same), if we get Moldovan Romanian contributors at all. The rest of varieties can be explained in the usage notes or using {{qualifier}}. --Anatoli 23:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• I have updated the format of these example entries, but I continue to note that the vote leaves it up to our Romanian contributors to decide what format to use. молдовенеск (post-1940s Cyrillic form), moldovenesc (Latin form); нє (pre-1860s Cyrillic), ne (Latin); ши (post-1940s Cyrillic), și (Latin), шѝ (should perhaps be шѝ) (pre-1860s Cyrillic). - -sche (discuss) 22:46, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Why?

Why merge the languages? The vote currently says:

{{mo}} will be deleted (when unused) or moved to {{etyl:mo}}: a discussion on Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Others will decide which.

But whatever reasoning there is for merging the languages should (I'd think) determine what to do with {{mo}}, so perhaps build that (what to do with {{mo}}) into this vote. Moreover, why merge mo into ro and not vice versa?​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The latter question is easy to answer: Romanian is clearly the more dominant language of the two, and predominantly used in linguistics, it would make no sense to merge Romanian into Moldovan. -- Liliana • 23:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

@Msh210, after an edit conflict. It's a bit controversial but Moldovans call their language Romanian, regardless whether they write in Cyrillic or Roman. The merge is for linking (so one can see spelling in both scripts) and for simplicity of maintenance (examples and grammar, sense will be available for users of both scripts), not for destroying (no-one bans the word Moldavian). The rationale is similar to Serbo-Croatian - you can get two languages for the price of one (if you insist on separating the two). --Anatoli 23:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Who calls it Moldavian/Moldovan, then? Why have we had them split until now? I'm not disagreeing with the proposal (or at least not yet  ;-) ), just seeking to understand it.​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:09, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, enWP answers that first question, I suppose: "Moldovan (also Moldavian; limba moldovenească, лимба молдовеняскэ) is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. […] The Constitution of Moldova (Title I, Article 13) states that the Moldovan language is the official language of the country."​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

As for the second question, well we adhere to ISO generally, and since it has separate codes for Romanian and Moldovan, we did the same. It's a bit like the Biblical Hebrew/{{hbo}} case, which you may be more familiar with. -- Liliana • 00:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) "Moldavian" can refer to a dialect of Romania spoken in a large area (Transnistria, Moldova, and parts of Romania), to Romanian only when spoken in a smaller area (Transnistria, Moldova) and called Moldavian, or (as Category:Moldavian language does at the moment) to Romanian only when spoken in an even smaller area (Transnistria) and called Moldavian.

We might use a template to indicate Moldavian-dialect words or words (such as those taken from Russian) which entered Romanian through Moldavian. Rather than combine the issues of merging the language and keeping or deleting the template (issues about which people might have different views), I took the language that postponed decision on {{mo}} from Mglovesfun's vote on Tagalog.

Why merge? The others have answered, but: There are no or almost no grammatical differences, and few lexical differences. The ISO has deprecated the codes mo and mol. The only distinctions between the two have been that Moldova and Romania spelt a few words (in the Latin alphabet) different between 1989 and ~2001, and that the unrecognised government of Transnistria has since the 1940s written words in a Cyrillic alphabet slightly different from the one Romania used before 1860. - -sche (discuss) 00:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. So both the current Transnistrian Cyrillic spellings and the old will be ro if this vote passes?​—msh210℠ (talk) 00:51, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Right, this vote explicitly guarantees that entries will be allowed (with the header ==Romanian==), no matter which alphabet they are in (Romania's old Cyrillic, Romania and Moldova's Latin, or Transnistria's modern Cyrillic), as long as they meet our general CFI. (That does mean that if someone sends a Transnistrian-Cyrillic word to RFV and we can't find citations of it, we'll delete it, rather than allowing it just because we have the Latin-alphabet spelling.) - -sche (discuss) 01:19, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Also (I tend to forget this myself), the modern Cyrillic alphabet (still used in Transnistria) was used in Moldova between the 1940s and 1989. - -sche (discuss) 02:40, 18 October 2011 (UTC)