Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-06/Unified Serbo-Croatian

Unified Serbo-Croatian

• Voting on: treating Bosnian (bs), Serbian (sr), Croatian (hr), and Montenegrin (no ISO code yet) all at one language header, Serbo-Croatian (sh). This affects L2 headers, category names, and almost everywhere that language codes are used (though since there exist separate bs, sr, and hr editions of certain projects, some uses of {{projectlink}}, {{t}}, etc. will need to remain intact until special replacements can be devised). See the proposed guideline Wiktionary:About Serbo-Croatian for more information.

• Vote starts: 00:00, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 24:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC) 24:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• Vote created: Ivan Štambuk 07:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
• Discussion:

  Wiktionary:Beer parlour#L2_header Serbo-Croatian instead of Croatian, Bosnian, etc.

  Wiktionary talk:About Serbo-Croatian

• Further relevant information:

  w:Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian

Support

1. Support Ivan Štambuk 16:53, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
2. Support Ƿidsiþ 17:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC) This is kind of...irregular, and someone else has pointed out that Czech and Slovak (as well as many other world languages) could conceivably be given the same treatment. However. I also find the arguments in favour persuasive, and more to the point, being a pragmatist, if all the editors working on these languages want to work this way then I am happy to bow to their judgement. Ƿidsiþ 17:06, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   No they couldn't be given an equal treatment. Czech and Slovak were based on different dialects (Slovak was intentionally standardized on a dialect to be as far as possible from literary Czech dialect, as at the period lots of Slovak cultural elite used Czech), B/C/S are all based on the same dialect (Neoštokavian) and have the same phonology and inflection, and share some 99% of overall grammar. I explained this already at the proposal's talkpage. --Ivan Štambuk 17:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

3. Support -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 19:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC) The fact that all of our key contributers in this area support this is enough to sway me, although it would be naive to think that this is without problems (what happens if the next generation thinks otherwise?). It should, perhaps, also be noted that voting against this is somewhat futile because of that fact, as the editors will, of course, continue to write entries as they see fit. NPOV does not apply, as we must take a point of view, and none of them are neutral. The closest we can come to a "neutral" point of view is the scientific standard, which is mutual comprehensibility, which supports this view. All told, I believe this option is easiest on our editors and most informative for our readers. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 19:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
4. I am putting my trust in SGB and voting in support.​—msh210℠ 20:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
5. Support --Dijan 22:39, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
6. Support Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:10, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
7. Support I support with some reservations. I agree with Ivan Štambuk's arguments but I don't know if the name Serbo-Croatian will become popular again, outside Wiktionary and even if we approve, the opponents may keep bringing it up. If Americans, British, Australians prefer to call their respective varieties English, we can call it too, if Germans and Austrians prefer to call their respective varieties German, we can call it too but the names Serbian, Croatian, etc. have now become wide-spread and may continue evolving differently. The difference in the script usage is also an obstacle. Still, I think we can save efforts of translators by combining these languages/dialects into one heading and voting in support of the language unity, which makes sense to me. Anatoli 23:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   It's ridiculous that non-native speakers of Croatian and Serbian or those who don't even speak any of these two languages think they can judge the thing properly. You certainly won't save efforts by combining languages into one because Croatian users will just stop contributing such dictionary. Croatian and Serbian differ way more than British and American English. I learned mixed version, so called Croato-Serbian at school but it became obsolete some 20 years ago. Now I hardly remember most of the words I used to speak. We talk differently nowadays. Croatian and Serbian continue to develop separately and this process is irreversible. If I hadn't learned mixed version at school I'd have big problems to understand Serbian. 195.29.96.146 (talk)

   Why exactly is "ridiculous" ? Anatoli is a professional translator proficient in at 3-4 Slavic language, which quite naturally gives him almost sh-1 proficiency in Serbo-Croatian. Also you've completely missed the point, like many of your hardline nationalist comrades: we're not "combining languages into one", but simply treating 3 different standards at one header, completely independently, reducing redundancy where it is appropriate (please read this sentence one more time, I imagine you could have difficulty grasping it). So far the only Croatian contributor here on Wiktionary is...well, me :) So imagine we wouldn't be loosing that much, quite the contrary: I imagine we'll draw quite a few new contributors that are not "ashamed" by the fact that standard Serbian and Bosnian and Croatian are 100% mutually intelligible and share 99% of grammar :) As for the "I'd have big problems understanding Serbian" - suffice to say that Bosnian and Serbian TV shows and movies are broadcasted on Croatian TV stations without subtitles; actually the only time they used subtitles with the movie Rane caused bursts of laughter and sarcastic newspaper columns :) --Ivan Štambuk 09:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

8. Support per the above comments and per the reality that this has already been standard and accepted practice here for several months. (I do wish we could follow the NPOV and wiki-ish ideals that Lmaltier and DCDuring espouse below, but I just don't see how that's workable in this case. Our perhaps-too-rigid structure requires that words belong to specific languages, and does not allow for this sort of flexibility. Perhaps someday, a viable proposal will be put forth that is more neutral in POV, but if so, that day has not yet come AFAICS.) —Ruakh_TALK 00:54, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
9. Support —Stephen 02:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
10. Support — If this vote fails, I want 42 L2 headers for 42 Armenian dialects, some mutually unintelligible. --Vahagn Petrosyan 03:44, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
11. Support. Linguistic concerns are the only ones of importance. DAVilla 07:30, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
12. Support Krun 00:11, 9 July 2009 (UTC) As before said, based on linguistic and practical concerns. I must however kindly ask you, Ivan Štambuk, to cease any unnecessary aggressive comments. It may detract from your credibility. Fortunately, you make a convincing linguistic argument that is backed up by other sources.
13. Support what a beautiful edit — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 12:19, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

    Comment: I think I recognize that Ivan's "unnecessarily aggressive" comments stem from frustration over putting up with people basically supporting the political agendas of each country's government without having any actual knowledge of the situation. This Wiktionary is for the most part created and maintained by amateur linguists and other-language natives. The former group should stop trying so hard to make their opinions popular. The trained linguists, however, should not let their personal opinions get in the way of facts. Everyone, let's loosen up a bit, shall we? — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 12:19, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

14. Support EncycloPetey 13:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC) I persoanlly feel that we must choose one approach or the other. Since all the major contributors for these entries agree, and since the various "languages"/"dialects" can be legitimately treated as part of a single language, I support this effort. --EncycloPetey 13:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
15. Support --Dcabrilo 16:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC) for several reasons, but I'll try to be brief:
    • There are more differences within languages spoken in Serbia, Croatia, B&H and Montenegro than between them. If these are separate languages, then it makes sense to create separate entries for Ekavian, Kajkavian, Torlak, etc. This would by all means lead to ridiculous amount of redundancy.
    • Both vernacular and standard languages are not really easy to separate. Take for example word bit. It is classified only as Croatian and it is most widely used in Croatia. However, it is perfectly normal to hear it in Serbia or Bosnia, just not as often. (try googling for "u biti" site:.rs). In Serbia, island is usually called ostrvo, but Adriatic islands are rarely referred to as anything else but otok. While standard Croatian for lawyer is odvjetnik, while walking through Zagreb you'll see a lot of street signs for advokat. The list goes on. I have in front of me: "Rečnik srpskog jezika" and "Rečnik srpsko-hrvatskog jezika", both by Matica Srpska, both list all the words that are here listed only as "Croatian" (which I cited above).
    • Separation into BCSM is political, not linguistic. Take for example Sarajevo: In a single street, in a single building, three closest neighbors speak exactly the same language, but if you ask them what is their native language, Bosniak might tell you it's Bosnian, Serb could tell you Serbian and Croat - Croatian. (mind you, they are all likely to say Serbo-Croatian).
    • Languages like English, German or Spanish are not separated according to ethnicity of their speakers, but are kept together according to linguistic properties of these languages.
    • While it is true that there are people who feel and want these languages to be separated, it is also true that pretty much since the first developments of language standardizations, Serbo-Croatian was taken to be an umbrella language for different dialects. Also, there are many people who feel and want Serbo-Croatian to be considered as such today, but it is not about what we feel and want, but about linguistic properties of the language. --Dcabrilo 16:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
16. Support per DAVilla supra. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 06:54, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
17. Support per Dcabrilo. I'm glad to see support for this. When I originally created the page plaža beach, it was as a Serbo-Croatian word. The word is exactly the same in all of the standards of the area. It was then changed to bs, hr, sr (an unnecessary duplication — let alone when you want to add Montenegrin as well) and now it has been changed back to Serbo-Croatian! Which is great PS. There are various historic and linguistic arguments for unifying some or all of the entries, but I won't go into them here at a risk of inflaming some national passions. Needless to say this is definitely an improvement, and means I can finally make use of my English—Serbo-Croatian dictionary, which had been sitting idle :D - Francis Tyers 23:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
18. Support B-rat 07:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
19. Support. There's really nothing to debate, the differences between various dialects in NYC are greater than those between BCS and M (even greater perhaps :). Why are some debating then? Because of irrational nationalist "pride" - but then who could blame them? This'll be a relatively lengthy post, but I'd like to properly put all this into context in order to explain the fierce opposition to something that may seem logical and normal in an objective world. Now then, the language in the old SFR Yugoslavia was naturally Serbo-Croatian, as nationalism and petty interests of the individual ethnic groups were kept well at bay. As this fell apart, Croats and Bosnian Muslims fought the Serb-controlled rump FR Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. In this virtually Serbian Yugoslavia ("Serboslavia"), Yugoslav unitarianism was slowly transformed into radical Greater Serbian nationalism, which claimed Croats and Bosnian Muslims were not seperate nations, but were in fact - all Serbs(!) of Catholic and Islamic faith, respectively. In Croatia particularly, Yugoslavia came to represent "Greater Serbia", and any form of union (state, trade, linguistic) between Serbs and Croats was (and is) completely unimaginable and unacceptable for the majority of the people. The Serbo-Croatian language to them represents Greater Serbian aspirations towards Croatia and its independence. Among Bosnian Muslims, the hatred of the Serbs is so profound that suggesting they have anything to do with them is completely unacceptable. Now Montenegrins are joining the fun, trying to emphasize the differences between them and Serbs (since they're also Orthodox and have the most similar culture). The question is: what does all this have to do with linguistics? The answer is: nothing. Opposition here, whether admittedly or not, directly or indirectly, and despite appearances in some cases, is at its core primarily motivated by these circumstances - not by factual accuracy and objective linguistic science free from political interference. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 15:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

    Ineligible. Registered one minute prior to casting the vote. -- Prince Kassad 17:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    • Deciding that a large percent of potential contributors won't contribute (even if they don't contribute for bad reasons), it's not helping the Wiktionary. Please, don't tell me what my motivation is. Lmaltier 16:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC) My reply was to a former version of the above comment. Lmaltier 17:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

    Misunderstanding: I'm not calling you a "nationalist" of any sort, nor am I claiming to be capable of reading your thoughts (which is what you appear to believe :) - all I'm saying is that the political mess down here (which I tried to describe) is the root cause of this issue - not actual linguistic concerns. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 16:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

    OK, but we have to do with this situation, we won't be able to change it (and, anyway, excluding people by excluding the language names they prefer, in spite of international standards, would not be the best way to change it, it can only make things worse). The important thing is that as many contributors as possible add correct and useful linguistic information. Lmaltier 16:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

    Such deeply-indoctrinated nationalists wouldn't be contributing here in the first place, or would leave really soon once they saw their contributions being multiplicated into 3 other identical language sections. It would simply be completely insultive for them to do such an activity that would prove to be pointless. It is no coincidence that all of the SC contributors here are not nationalists at all. Also Lmaltier, you might familiarize yourself with the general public's perception of English language, and British and American (Anglosaxon) cultural milieu on ex-yu nationalist area - it's not that they really like it. Croat nationalists still resent the British for Bleiburg (I've personally seen people celebrating when London terrorists attacks happened in 2005 - and these were collage students, imagine what would be the reaction of an uneducated peasant), Serbs absolutely despise America and NATO (after the bombings that had less real-world arguments than the WoMD were for the attack on Iraq), and Bosniaks and Croats also don't have much pretty words for both of them either (it was de facto embargo on weapons and the politics of "non-action" by UN/NATO(SC) for the whole ex-yu area that enabled the bloody output of the 1990s conflict). English language is among common people perceived as "primitive" (lack of inflection), non-cultured (too many borrowings and too less of a native words) etc. So the loss would be minimal, as after all the Wiktionary contributor's trend in the last 6 years of project's existence has shown us. There is no point in arguing with "could-be" type of hypothetical problems. So far there were no problems and that's what's important._{Note that everything here written applies to nationalists only - most of common people are "normal", but unfortunately they're often not the most vocal or agile ones, it's the PoV fundamentalists that are.} --Ivan Štambuk 16:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

20. Support -- Serbian and Croatian are far closer to each other than some dialects of English are to the Queen's language. Bogdan 16:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
21. Support Karelklic 17:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
22. Support Avoiding unnecessary duplication and confusion has obvious practical benefits for the reader. If it's shown that the reader can't use the dictionary because of their politics, then rename the header "Bosnian, Croation and Serbian", or whatever. As to editors, I'll try to have sympathy for your personal difficulties, but arguments that this is Serbian "genocide", or protests that it makes "Croats have anything to do" with you just don't belong here. Register your vote, but please get a grip on your emotions or vent them elsewhere. —Michael Z. 2009-07-23 02:58 z
23. Support Vukotic I think that anyone who is guided by linguistic/scientific reasons and believes that politics shouldn't be treated as science simply cannot disagree with the above proposition.
24. Support The only reasons why these were ever considered separate languages are political. --Local hero ^talk 15:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
25. Support. Okay, after lots and lots of wavering and swirling thoughts and would-be submissions thwarted by indecisiveness I've finally decided to submit a vote on this. I now agree with the points raised in favour of this. I mean honestly with the languages as it is just because the Serbs might hate the Croats' guts and vice versa that doesn't mean they are separate languages. It's almost like saying "No, I don't speak English, I speak American". 50 Xylophone Players talk 17:03, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
26. Support. The main reasons have been mentioned: dissipation of space is being avoided, since more than 99% of the entries have the same spelling in Latin scriptm so that one header would suffice. 2) Linguistically it is apter to tag Ekavian and Ijekavian, which are both præsent on the territories of BiH, Serbia and Montenegro. 3) Nationalistic and politically-motivated altercations and resentment are surmounted and kept away from Wiktionary, which is exemplified by the reaction to the chauvinistic comment of Pepsi Lite. 4) the rest is succinctly expressed in Vahagn's comments above, not to mention the mutually unintelligible Gheg and Tosk Albanian dialects, which are kept together by purely political reasons. According to Wikipedia the Albanian language acquired its unified form in 1972 and has barely 40 years of standardised writing, whereas, as Ivan already explained, Serbo-Croatian has been written as a unified language by Croatian and Serbian writers since the 1850s, until the bigoted political agenda from the 1990s of the nationailst leaders of the newly-emerged countries began to jeopardise its unity and yet doubt is being cast here by the anti-SC voting below on the unity of SC instead of Albanian which I find ineffably astonishing. 5) No linguistic reference has been provided for the existence of three languages in lieu of one, and instead Robert D. Greenberg's book and the author's rejective attitude towards those political developments has been quoted, which only proves that in spite of their die-hard fierceness they remain on the political dimension and have never ever influenced the linguistic one, which is to be dealt with on Wiktionary. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:06, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
27. Maro 17:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
28. Support Conrad.Irwin 23:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC) Changed from oppose because a) I do not feel I have thought thoroughly enough to oppose stubbornly, b) I'd much rather this VOTE was decidable one way or the other than left as a no consensus.
29. Support OC Ripper 11:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC) For strictly practical reasons. --OC Ripper 11:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
30. Support Makaokalani 12:14, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
31. Support Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf For strictly practical reasons. --Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf 18:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

    Support User:Hxseek — This unsigned comment was added by 121.209.233.94 (talk) at 05:58, 5 August 2009 (UTC).

    Although we have to clarify that, it is "standard" Croatian that is the same language as Bosnian & Serbian. WHen I was in Dalmatia, I really did find the local Chakavian only partly intelligible (with my limited linguistic abilities) 121.209.233.94 05:58, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    forged vote, striked out. -- Prince Kassad 14:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    Unstruck, signature corrected. (Some votes — including this one, the IP "Oppose", Pepsi Lite's "Oppose", maybe some others — will get struck at closing, but I think it's just fanning the flames for partisan editors to strike them now.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

32. Support per the convincing arguments above, and due to the lack of convincing arguments below. BalkanFever 07:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    account created immediately before voting, not eligible -- Prince Kassad 17:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

33. Support--Griotta 10:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC) Bosnian films need not to be translated for Croatian or Serbian audience and vice versa, as even the lowest-educated Bosnians, Croatians, Montenegrins and Serbs can completely understand each other. As I can recollect, there was only one attempt of translating the Serbian film ("Rane", directed by Srdjan Dragojevic) for Croatian audience in 1999, resulting in 90 minutes of ROFL. --Griotta 10:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
35. Support Please accept my apologies for the potentially obvious "nonknowledge" (antonym to knowledge) of the discussion's course so far. Actually the unknowledge should be regarded as "nontotal" (antonym to total) "informedness" (noun for informed) about all the comments, votes and arguments given, and their respective rationales. I especially plead (as in To beg, beseech, or implore) for your tolerance of me creating new words. Considering that my first sin is forgiven, I will boldly represent the rationale of my vote. The rationale will be hopefully enough illustrative when formed as questions. And then the questions would hopefully be understood as arguments, since questions' respective answers would be rhetorical YESs and/or similar assertions/acceptances/agreements/accords/affirmations.

    So the rationale goes:

    • If Serbo-Croatian is considered a macrolanguage of B and C and S (and M?), and macro- by itself means also large, inclusive, it appears quite reasonable that Serbo-Croatian should have L2 headers comparing to L3 for the B and C and S (and M?).
    • And If I'm not mistaken that term macro-language (as a neologism) is used in Wikipedia, promoted by SIL (?), and coded by ISO (which has documentation hosted on SIL's site sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=hbs and that implies some bias or even agenda), then again by giving B and C and S (and M?) the L3 heading, we are actually supporting that standard, aren't we? At least not disobeying it.
    • And if native speakers of B and C and S (and M?) would have something to comment on this as a potential POV issue perhaps, they have all the force with them. This is a wiktionary, id est wiki dictionary, isn't it?

    Although I unfortunately I do have some reservations regarding this issue (and that's one of the reasons of my tardiness), and they concern the term itself used for the language: Serbo-Croatian, my vote is cast as support. It could be considered in the future to invent a neologism - BCS perhaps - for that "disputed" (hopefully not offensive) term: Serbo-Croatian.

    Although this may sound unsound, the term already exists, doesn't it?

    Wishing you all all the best from the native speaker of sh: and sr:, Biblbroks 19:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    My only reason for voting Oppose is the prohibition of separate sections (I'm OK with allowing Serbo-Croatian sections), and your rationale doesn't address this point. Also remember that we're not a democracy. The NPOV principle is more important than votes. Lmaltier 20:17, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    I ask you again: how exactly the merger proposal is not NPOV? Do we treat all the standard varieties equally? Yes we do. Do we give any kind of prominence to either of them? No we don't. The NPOV treatment is to either 1) treat all of them separately at different L2s 2) Treat all of them colellectively at one L2. Hence, no NPOV violation. --Ivan Štambuk 19:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

36. Support —AugPi 21:54, 5 August 2009 (UTC) Look at http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=beton&oldid=5188288 's inflection templates for Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian. They are the same! Look at the Appendix:Swadesh lists for Slavic languages and compare S, C, and B: they are practically the same! They are the same language, claimed to be different for political reasons.

    I was just reading a Wikipedia article on w:Ausbausprache,_Abstandsprache_and_Dachsprache. I might have to concede that B/C/S/M are separate "Ausbau languages." —AugPi 22:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    In a sociolingustic sense, they are different standard languages (or "Ausbausprache", if you will), but linguistically they're the same language (the Neoštokavian dialect). This proposal is about treating all the 3 (or 4, when Montenegrin gets codified) standards at the same header (quoting from WT:ASH#Introduction: "The term Serbo-Croatian on Wiktionary acts as a generic container to all 4 national varieties. Each word in either of the standards merits inclusion, granted it satisfies Wiktionary criteria for inclusion."), and absolutely nothing else. The proposed policy carefully avoids the issue of whether the 3 standards are "different languages" or not: it simply uses the term standard or literary idiom to refer to either of the national variants. --Ivan Štambuk 22:35, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

37. Support -- because of the linguists mentioned below (e.g. [1] and [2]) --MaEr 17:31, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
38. Support --Smooth O 13:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
39. Support as a nativ speaker. --Seha 14:09, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
40. Support --Biologinja 17:11, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
41. Support Why not. On Serbian Wiktionary there is no activity for 30 days and more, Bosniak wiktionary doesn't exists at all, Croatian Wiktionary is intolerant toward Cyrillic entries [3]. --BokicaK 04:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC) I didn't read carefully, I thought that you are talking about merging wiktionarys. Please, forgive me. But I still support Ivan's proposal. --BokicaK 12:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

    LoL. Apparently someone notified Roberta F. in the meantime that "Croatian Wiktionary" is not a "dictionary of Croatian" but "dictionary in Croatian" ^_^. And they accuse me of non-tolerance... --Ivan Štambuk 04:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose to the prohibition of Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian headers. Prohibiting Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian headers despite the fact that all States and international organizations recognize them as separate languages would offend some people and would therefore violate the NPOV policy. I don't mind about allowing Serbo-Croatian headers. Lmaltier 17:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   "[W]ould offen[d] some people and would therefore violate NPOV policy"? Anything that offends some people violates NPOV policy?​--msh210℠ 17:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   Yes, if it's the result of a decision contradicting all States and international organizations. Suppose that Wikipedia decides to exclude a country from a list of countries despite the fact that it is recognized as in independent country by all other States (but provides the best possible historic arguments for this exclusion). Wouldn't this decision violate the NPOV policy? Lmaltier 17:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   Can you point me to the Wiktionary NPOV policy that forbids nationalists being offended by failing to mention their imaginary "languages" ? --Ivan Štambuk 18:08, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   This is exactly what I mean by NPOV violation: calling internationally recognized languages imaginary languages. But I don't want to add anything else here (please use the talk page or the Beer Parlour). Lmaltier 18:17, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   LOL, they're not internationally recognized, having an ISO/SIL code means nothing. 99% of Western Slavists still treat them as one and the same language. I've explained this over and over and over again.. They are imaginary languages treated separately by their individual governments and brain-washed speakers, but as a group (as "varieties" of SC) by basically everyone else. --Ivan Štambuk 18:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

2. Oppose DCDuring TALK 18:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC) If the sh ISO code is going to succeed, it needs to do so by outcompeting the other ISO codes. If the other ISO codes lapse into disarray because no one is willing to maintain them, this should be revisited. DCDuring TALK 18:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   Are we writing a dictionary of ISO/SIL codes, or dictionary of languages ? --Ivan Štambuk 19:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   Also everyone should note that ISO originally granted only one ISO code - sh, and the rest were allocated only years later - after the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the fabrication of national "languages". After that ISO/SIL reallocated Serbo-Croatian as a so-called "macrolanguage", with a code hbs. Note that the concept of "macrolanguage" is a mere term of convenience used by SIL/ISO, and not a term used in general linguistics. --Ivan Štambuk 19:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   Purely linguistic concerns do not determine this kind of choice. This is not an ivory tower. This wiki is an institution that operates in the world of social and political practices and realities. If some folks want to have separate codes, I see no reason why not. The essence of a wiki is its openness and acceptance of a great amount of diversity. I see no reason why any language code, once it attracts contributions, should be deprecated except by open competition. The better the sh entries are relative to those of the other codes, the more further development they will get. Further, I hope that soon my "oppose" will be rendered irrelevant by developments in the real world. DCDuring TALK 23:13, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   HELLO DCDURING, we're trying to write a DICTIONARY here! I mean, if "purely linguistic concerns" are of no relevance to a dictionary, this project should self-destruct this very instant!

   I tend to disagree that this unification could lead to a loss of potential contributors - it's very uncomfortable to those nationalist attaching labels such as ==Bosnian==, ==Croatian== or ==Serbian== to a word they very well know is also spoken exactly the same way by other of the 3/4 ethnicities/nations. It is no coincidence that basically all major SC contributors on this project (Dijan, Bogorm, myself and some others from time to time) are supportive of this unification - you won't get proud B/C/S nationalists spreading "wikilove" around here, creating/cloning individual B/C/S sections, with a feeling they all have deep down in their throat "am I looking that silly doing this?"

   Your hope for developments in the real world is in vain, at least for the next 10+ years or so, and I hardly doubt that anyone here is eager to wait that much. We have a problem that is already solved, and are simply taking a formal step to finalize the obvious solution, the one that should've been pursued from the very start. --Ivan Štambuk 23:38, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

   He didn't say that "'purely linguistic concerns' are of no relevance", only that they're not the final determinants of all decisions. And he's quite right: you yourself have raised several valid extralinguistic concerns, such as the logistical mess inherent in a fourfold duplication of these entries. --Ruakh_TALK 00:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

   There is no need to buy a Croatian dictionary, if you already have a Serbian dictionary or rather Serbo-Croatian, especially the one that shows those small differences. I voted in favour. The EU now that ex-Yugoslav republics may join the Union are considering having a pool of Serbo-Croatian translators/interpreters to use, especially when the passions have cooled down and the choice of a translator/interpreter is driven by the efficient language knowledge, not by their religious or ethnic background or accent. Anatoli 04:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

3. Oppose to the prohibition of Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian headers per this Doremítzwr's comment. --Duncan 16:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
4. Oppose Robert Ullmann 16:47, 8 July 2009 (UTC) this is an obscenity. The suppression of Croatian, Bosnian (and Serbian itself!) is nothing but genocide, a continuation by other means of the crimes committed by Serbians. This "proposal", and "vote" are, in themselves a crime against humanity, Robert Ullmann 16:47, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

   Since there is still some whining about this:

   • The term "Serbo-Croatian" is extremely offensive to some people, and somewhat offensive for others.
   • Having a "vote" to suppress the standard languages and replace them with a "language" firmly rejected by the international and respective national communities is not acceptable. It is not a proper subject for a "vote".
   • The term is incorrect: labelling a Bosnian Cyrillic entry "Serbo-Croatian" is simply wrong
   • The effect of the proposal is to purge Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian from the database, regardless of whining that that is not the intent
   • It breaks our standards compliance, and is not possible to fix. (Again, despite much handwaving about "just do this")

   (my apologies if this cues yet another abusive tirade) Robert Ullmann 11:56, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

   And here again replies to same types of logically fallacious arguments RU keeps reiterating over and over gain, on which I've wasted countless kilobytes of texts explicating, here simply in brief lines (for more detailed account please refer to the respective talk pages, or query me on my talkpage):

   1. The term Serbo-Croatian is perfectly acceptable in English language. It is and has been used by the foremost Western Slavists and experts on the language itself (e.g. Wayles Browne, Kenneth Naylor) as well as the foremost general Slavists, Balto-Slavists and Indo-Europeanists (e.g. Max Vasmer, Vladimir Dybo, Jay Jasanoff etc.). It is also used by SIL/ISO ifself [4] as a "macrolanguage" identifier. There is absolutely no evidence of the term being "extremely offensive" - I am a native speaker and have never heard of a story of anyone being "extremely offended" by hearing that term (which was the official language for half a century until the 1990s). At best, it may be uncomfortable for some of the extreme nationalists, but that's all. Such folks wouldn't be contributing here anyway so it's safe to ignore them.
   2. We are not "suppressing" anything - all of the standards are allowed, not a single word is "forbidden" (all per CFI) - it's just the treatment that is changed - we don't use separate sections anymore to reduce the mutliplication of exactly the same content (they're linguistically the same language, after all) by some 3-4 times, and when lexically deviating from common core (in some ~5% of cases, don't need to worry about the grammar which is the same) they are to be treated trivially with context labels. Also - there is no "international recognition", having SIL to assign language code is sometimes as easy as sending an e-mail (the case of Lingua Franca Nuova we had), and by > 99% of all Western linguistis B/C/S are doubtless one language. All the FL universities in the world treat them as one, there are no separate courses on "Bosnian language" or "Croatian language". The common treatment is simply following a standard practice.
   3. Bosnian Cyrillic script (or Western Cyrillic, as it is more properly called) has as much to do with modern-day Bosnian language (Serbo-Croatian variety codified in the 1990s), as Ancient Macedonian has with modern day Macedonian language. The only thing they share is their name, which was historically ambiguous referring to different regions and peoples in different ages. Historically, this type of Cyrillic script was used by all 3 ethnicities - Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, and most of it preserved literary output is in fact by Croatian writers (Bosnian Franciscan monks). It is just a variation of the usual Cyrillic letters which won't ever be coded in Unicode at a separate code range and thus must be entered in the usual Cyrillic range (in edited/transcribed form, of course). Also, per B&H constitution the modern-day codified Bosnian language can also be written in Cyrillic script (!), although in practice it is never so as 99.999% of Bosniaks only use Latin script.
   4. The effect of the proposal would be a unification of previously 3 (or 4, when so-called "Montengrin language" gets invented in a few years, if it ever does) separate sections in one. However, the important thing to have in mind is that no information should be lost - only the content presentation would be optimized, greatly facilitating the work of Serbo-Croatian contributors (such as myself), as explained in the abovelinked rationale, as well as to SC Wiktionary users who wouldn't have to waste time chasing 4-6 entries scattered on several pages, with usually 95% of content duplication among them. To say that all there is to proposal is to "delete" or "purge" B/C/S/M from the database, as you and Lmaltier have been imagining, would be completely out of touch with reality. Yes it would by effect "delete" separate sections, but for very good benefits, not for the cause of deletion itself.
   5. What do you mean by "standards compliance" ? Is there an international committee that determines what is a valid Wiktionary language sections? Of course not, it's just an empty phrase. Thousands of world's languages don't have an ISO code, which doesn't mean that they "don't exist" or that we shouldn't have them. Lots of those languages with ISO codes are never going to appear on Wiktionary (a bunch of conlangs we've already forbidden) and some of the "real" languages, at least one that I found and am certain of - the so-called "Knaanic" which has been assigned code czk - never existed and are purely a result of someone's imagination. So we shouldn't bother with "standards" as they do not oblige us to do anything. Wiktionary template infrastructure could be adopted to this change without major difficulties. The only problem would be folks who use CSS customization for bs/hr/sr language tags in HTML - but these are something like one out of billion surfers, and they should have no problems redefining their rules to "sh" tag.

   • (My apologies for another longish "wannabe-abusive" reply - Serbo-Croatian is my mother tongue, and I've done some 20 000 edits on Wiktionary Serbo-Croatian entries, and upon seeing so much FUD disseminated by a person who doesn't even know any Slavic language at all I feel obliged to dismiss it under rational arguments, what RU terms "whining" but you better judge for yourself). --Ivan Štambuk 13:01, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

   Ullmann is trolling with his distasteful rhetoric, as usual. For the casual reader: SC has abs. nothing to do with "war crimes" or "genocides", as it was created in the first half of 19th century long before the Balkan Wars, 1943-45 and 1990s wars. --Ivan (talk) 20:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

   While I can't see a clear link between "genocide" or "crime against humanity" and the proposed merger, I find the use of such terms as "trolling" and "distasteful" uncalled for. Also, if someone would refer to me here as "Polansky", I think I would feel offended, but that may be individual, and it certainly depends on culture and times. --Dan Polansky 08:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

   I don't know of any other term to describe what Ullmann is doing other then trolling. He is mentioning "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" in the context of the proposed merger, trying to portray me as some kind of "Serb nationalist", when in fact I'm a Croat, and moreover neither of the other SC contributors is Serbian. He clearly ignores a great deal of benefits that the merger would bring, and which I abundantly listed and explained over and over again several times, and is chiefly focused on the political perspective of only one of the connotations of the term Serbo-Croatian. I explained to him (and others) that the term Serbo-Croatian was coined in the 19th century (by Pero Budmani) long before war crimes he mentions took place. It was only subsequently demonized during the nationalist eras, but in English, it's still very much in use among the most distinguished Slavists (American and European), and is moreover still used by SIL/ISO [5] as a macrolanguage name. So it's safe to conclude that anyone who stills insists that the term is "genocidal" or "POV" is simply trolling.

   I'm sorry that you're offended when being referred to by surname. In Croatia it is very common to be referred by surname, esp. if you have "generic" first name like I do. I was taught to refer to a person by surname in all formal contexts. I shall hereinafter refer to you as "Daniel". --Ivan (talk) 11:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

   Point taken. Robert Ullmann has explained to me that addressing by surname is normally not considered offensive in Kenya. I have acknowledged that this can be a matter of culture. I was trying to bring accross the impression that that way of addressing left upon me, without saying that the impression is correct. By doing so, I have learned something. --Dan Polansky 07:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

5. oppose all reasons have already been mentioned. It's unacceptable to force a language upon readers that clearly does not exist as one entity. -- Prince Kassad 19:32, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

   It existed as one entity for ~150 years until 1991 when these new "languages" were fabricated by nationalist governments. But you as an "expert" on the subject don't need to be reminded of that, do you. --Ivan (talk) 20:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

   Languages are not fixed entities and they can evolve over time. Languages that have been a dialect 150 years ago may now be regarded as independent, even if the individual dialects are mutually intelligible (Azeri dialects have been recently redefined as individual languages, for example). Ethnolinguistic and socioligic aspects are vital in determining what constitutes a dialect and what doesn't. Basing the definition solely on linguistic aspects has caused the calamity that Ethnologue has done on dialects of German and other major languages. -- Prince Kassad 20:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

   So Serbo-Croatian, according to you, was one language in 1991, 2 langauges in 1992, 3 languages in 1994, and by the end of 2009 it will be "4 languages" (when Montengrin gets codified on exactly the same Ijekavian Neoštokavian dialect, and gets assigned an ISO code) ?

   Look Kassad, I am quite familiar with the concept of dialectal divergence over time, and esp. of South Slavic dialects, and what you say is completely inapplicable here: All those 4 languages are based on one static dialect that was standardized in the early 19th century, and hasn't changed at all until. A few months ago I've read a comparative grammar of "Croatian" [6] written by the bestest Croatian Slavist & Indo-Europeanist Ranko Matasović, and do you know according to which dictionary he cited all the "Croatian language" lemmata? The 1901 Broz-Iveković dictionary, the one that I mentioned to Polansky below, written by 2 ardent Croatian Vukovians, which was basically completely based on the corpus of Karadžić's Serbian folk tales and poems! How exactly it turned out to become "Croatian dictionary" is an interesting questions for sociologists and historians (and psychiatrists).

   Now that I mention that book (which is quote awesome BTW, in synch with modern scholarship), it has a part on defining "Croatian language", as (in translation from SC): "Croatian is a language spoken by Croats, or that has been spoken by Croats". Now, according to the analogous criterion there would be "American language", "Belgian language", "Brazilian language"... See what nationalism does to your mind? In Balkans language is a big badge of self-identity, and even the most professional scholars lack the objective perception on subjects that would invalidate their nationalist PoV.

   The only criterion of what constitutes a dialect of something or not is that of comparative dialectology and genetic lingusitics. Sociolinguistics (=politics) is completely irrelevant to dialectologists. All of these B/C/S "languages" are based on identical dialects, share the same phonology and inflection, and in no way can be observed or treated separately. The grammar books written 150 years ago are still perfectly applicable. Schooling, standardization and mass media have nullified all the "evolution" (I hate applying anthropomorphic attributes to languages, so I always put them in quotation marks) that has been going on in natural languages for thousands of years. French, English, German etc. in 500 years, if they would still exist, would be completely mutually intelligible with modern French, Englsh, German.. no doubt about that.

   Slavic dialects on SC area all form a dialect continuum (the nearest genetic node encompasses also Slovenian dialects, froming West South Slavic branch), and borders between them do not match with that of nations or states. So it makes no sense to speak of "ethnic dialects". There are some subdialects that are spoken only by one nation/ethnicity, but Štokavian is not one of them. These subliterary dialects are moreover increasingly dying out. Neoštokavian is shared among all of the 4 nations, and there is no language of which B/C/S/M can be possibly dialects of. --Ivan (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

6. Oppose Neskaya kanetsv 05:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC) Per most of the other reasons stated, this looks like it would be a rather bad move for Wiktionary as a whole right now. --Neskaya kanetsv 05:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
7. Oppose Pepsi Lite 06:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC) I as a Serbian oppose this. The less Croats have anything to do with us, the better. Pepsi Lite 06:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   I don't think the vote above should be counted. --Vahagn Petrosyan 06:39, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   Yeah, I'll strike them all when the vote expires. (Sooner or l8r some of the opposing clique will start canvassing on nationalist wikipedias, so it's reasonably assume that there'll be more of these). --Ivan Štambuk 07:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   Pardon me, but no. You will not be striking votes you don't think should count. Firstly, they do count (there is no contributions rule, it was voted down). Secondly, someone else will count and close the vote. Robert Ullmann 13:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   I will strike any votes I think that are invalid, and you are certainly not the one that could to stop me. You have no knowledge of Serbo-Croatian (or any Slavic language in general), and are completely incompetent to decide which votes were cast in petty nationalist desires (interestingly, contrary to you imaginations, we have Serb nationalist here opposing the unification! Which proves even more how your claims of Serbo-Croatian being "genocidal, Serb-induced term" were completely off the mark). Personally I think that anyone who hasn't commented on some of the SC discussions we've had in the last 4 months in various places shouldn't have the right to vote. --Ivan Štambuk 13:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   _{We should SERIOUSLY not be allowing the person who starts a vote to be striking OR closing votes. Because we have no objective guidelines, such a thing is entirely unacceptable. --Neskaya kanetsv 07:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)}

   _{Actually, your conclusion is logically unsound: since we don have any kind of guidelines, everything is acceptable.} --Ivan Štambuk 07:31, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

   _{The point remains that you should not be striking votes or closing a vote which you started. I think that this might as well suggest that it is well time that we do have guidelines on voting, because otherwise I think that you are unreasonably attempting to force a vote that you started to pass rather than letting the votes speak for themselves. Please, refrain from being the one to strike the votes: It. Looks. Bad. --Neskaya kanetsv 17:43, 12 July 2009 (UTC)}

   There, I have to disagree with you. Some very competent and long-time regular editors here may choose not to comment in a discussion, but still may have an informed vote to cast. Did Semper join in the discussion? If not, would you "throw out" his vote, however he might choose to cast it? Votes are votes. If you think requirements for voting should be instituted, then you ought to start that discussion in the WT:BP and later take it to a vote. However, no such requirements currently exist. --EncycloPetey 13:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   I certainly wouldn't struck votes of any of the regulars - but simply mentioned that only folks that showed interest in this proposal should be (in my opinion) allowed to vote. With striking - I primarily referred to votes of folks with no or insignificant number of edits like Pepsi Lite, who are obviously not voting with a logical evaluation of the proposal in mind, but for various political and ideological reasons which do not concern us here. The opposing votes done in good faith are perfectly valid. Unfortunately, I don't think many of them are such. --Ivan Štambuk 13:50, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   I agree with Robert Ullmann. I mean, I don't completely agree with him: unlike him, I feel that unless Pepsi Lite shows some desire to actually contribute here, his/her vote should not be counted; we don't have a contribution threshold for voting, but that's hardly an open invitation to Wikipedians to come impose their views on us. But I agree with him that you should not be the one to strike votes, nor the one to close the vote. If we had objective criteria for striking votes, and for deciding whether a vote has passed, I would obviously trust you to follow those criteria; but given that all we have are subjective guidelines and our best efforts to examine votes dispassionately, your many angry comments here disqualify you in my eyes. --Ruakh_TALK 13:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   I really hope that vote-striking will be unnecessary and that the proposal is likely to pass after all. If it doesn't, then we could deal with the problem of bad-intention votes done by external editors (not of Wiktionary, but of sister projects, possibly in other languages.) --Ivan Štambuk 14:05, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   I believe that our barriers to broad participation in votes are already so high as to make these votes almost meaningless as a reflection of the interests of the user community, WMF, sister projects, and occasional contributors. For a matter such as this we should be welcoming broader participation. Every restriction on participation is a step away from wikiness toward ivory-towerdom.

   I would particularly have welcomed the chance to hear from a large number of native speakers of the language(s)/language family/ISO codes involved. Under our practice of not advertising votes, it is hard to see how that would be possible. This is an occasion in which we will be the worse for not being able to obtain the information that broader participation would garner. DCDuring TALK 14:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   You have had a chance to involve participants from FL sister projects in the discussions we held in the last several months. And some indeed commented. There's no point in dragging a bunch of Balkan nationalists to cast their opposing votes here, and then leave for good. --Ivan Štambuk 14:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   While I see the reasons given by the voter as dubious, there is no constraint on the quality or plausibility of reasoning in the voting policies. Thus the vote is valid, AFAICT. --Dan Polansky 14:35, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   It is formally valid (as we don't have any criteria for voting), but it's more then obvious that that user has no desire to contribute to this project, or to evaluate the numerous benefits of the proposal with regard to the both users and the regular contributors, i.e. nothing other than express his disagreement with the proposal on the basis of the nationality of the person who proposed it. Formally valid, but let's just hope that there won't be too many of these. --Ivan Štambuk 14:56, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

   We should vote on whether or not to count PepsiLite's vote :p I feel that anyone who doesn't object to the vote is indirectly supporting racial/national hatred. Plenty of people vote without leaving comments, so the fact that he/she did choose to leave a comment should maybe be taken into consideration. I'm not even Croatian and the comment offends me, but on a human level. I vote to strike the vote! -- [ R*I*C ] opiaterein -- 00:26, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

   As a further explanation of why Serbs should not have anything to do with Croats is because of one sided bigotry like this. --Pepsi Lite 12:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

   _{NB: While dealing with Bosniak, Croat and Serb extremists on Wikipedia, I've grown quite accustomed to being simultaneously called mutually conflicting appellations such as "Serb nationalist", "Croat nationalist", "communist" etc. I guess it's all in the perspective of which side you are against. I think that the example of a Serbian Wikipedia contributor (apparently Serbian diaspora - and diaspora is regularly a safe harbor for ex-Yugoslavia emigre extremists) fiercely opposing this proposal, and me being in fact an ethnic Croat as the original initiator of it, pretty much disproves the assumption of some hidden "Greater Serbian" agenda in it.} --Ivan Štambuk 12:48, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

   N.B. Pepsi Lite has now been blocked for a month. Since it's obvious (s)he was not about to do anything useful, I think it's just as well. —Ruakh_TALK 12:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

   # Oppose Conrad.Irwin 23:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC) Changed to support above. Conrad.Irwin 23:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

8. Oppose Dan Polansky 09:55, 19 July 2009 (UTC) I have made my mind. --Dan Polansky 09:55, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
9. Oppose hippietrail 16:03, 19 July 2009 (UTC) I've decided after so much ranting that I'm against both forced combining and forced separation. People that want to enter Serbocroatian can do that. People that want to enter Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, or Serbian can do that. All the parties can ignore each other if they don't get on. Similar or identical or duplicate information does not bother me. Long pages don't bother me. Most of the arguments I see are straw mean to push some agenda and have other languages or language groups falling on either side where there are similar issues. Big deal. Live and let live. Readers looking up any of these languages know they can look at entries for the other languages where they may find duplicate information or different information given that views on the languages or this group of languages is very polarised. &mdash hippietrail 16:03, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

   But you cannot deny the fact that the merger would make it immensely more useful to the users to learn either of the SC varieties, or all of them at once (as what most would be interested in). Having simultaneously both the B/C/S and the merged SC is pointless waste of time for both the contributors who'd be facing maintenance hell (even more so when than when there were only separate B/C/S), and the users, and defies the very purpose of why this merger was proposed. It is completely wrong to perceive this merger as some kind of "conflict" between the group that are for individual B/C/S(/M) sections and and a group that are "against" them - that is what the vocal clique of Ullmann, Lmaltier et al. are trying to make of it: it's of mere convenience for maintaining and looking up SC words. I'm sorry to see another lost soul succumbing to their FUD. You and them are not the ones who'd be wasting time with that kind of "solutions", I am. --Ivan Štambuk 16:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

10. --史凡 - Please also use skype: sven0921 as I suffer RSI and thus cannot type very well! 17:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

    reasons=slomox's--史凡 - Please also use MSN/skype: sven0921 as I suffer RSI and so cannot type very well! 05:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

11. Oppose Rose Waswa 07:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
12. Urhixidur 12:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
13. Oppose, as a multilingual dictionary, we report what languages already exist (i.e. we can't create new language groups). If the governments of the world choose to separate their languages, we must report it as such. I am vehemently opposed to Ivan being allowed to cross out votes, or close this vote; it's obvious that he has a conflict of interest in the matter. –blurpeace (talk) 16:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC) Until I can see a clear consensus, with almost everyone in agreement, and everything is planned out accordingly, I can not, in right mind, support this. –blurpeace (talk) 05:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

    "The only reasons why these were ever considered separate languages are political". We are not an outlet for the Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian governments to express their politically separationist views. Whether governments want to misguidedly view SH as three "languages" is their choice. Wiktionary isn't a political soapbox. It's a dictionary. A linguistic project. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 16:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    Sorry Blurpeace but the governments don't "separate" languages (and neither they represent all of their people, esp. in Croatia where 60-70% people doesn't even vote on the elections). They don't have the ability to define languages in real linguistic sense, and even if they tried to do that, their effort would be measured by the practical real-world impact, and nothing else. In the case of B/C/S, the impact is minimal: according to 99% of Western Slavist, B/C/S are still one language, as basically nothing has changed from the times of SFRJ and modern "standard languages" are simply continuations of former SC variety standards. Ask any university professor of Slavic Studies in your city (wherever you live, granted it's not ex-Yugoslavia), whether anything has changed between 1989, when it was officially Serbo-Croatian, and 2009. I won't strike any votes or close the vote itself, but when the vote formally expires I'll try to provide various metrics on the numerical voting output, based the ability of the opposing voters (namely the proficiency in Serbo-Croatian and/or other Slavic languages), likelihood of being canvassed, number of their contributions in SC and/or other Slavic languages, and the overall participation on the discussion boards when this issue was abundantly raised, in order to help decide to what extent communis opinio among several important groups (native speakers and SC contributors on one side, and the project regulars on the other side) has been achieved. Simple counting X vs Y simply isn't illustrative enough, and I'm far to be settled with argument such as "there are enough opposing votes, hence no consensus, hence vote must fail", because this is really important to me as you can probably see, and I'll be very disturbed if someone with minimal contributions and knowledge in the subject would be a determining factor to what I ought to do in contributing entries in my mother tongue. By common sense, you surely must agree that it's pointless to equally treat the votes of superb contributors and project regulars who are (or came to be) knowledgeable on the linguistic and political background of the issue, and "paratroopers" who didn't even bother to read the unification rationale, possibly landing here on the basis of some malicious rumors. (Analogy with modern-day democracy is perfectly valid). This whole merger proposal is primarily driven by the need of more efficient NPOV treatment of SC varieties: the section-duplication approach was simply plainly dumb and it took me and Dijan some 50 000 edits to realize that, and we're now trying to fix the damage and provide 10 times more enjoying and useful editing and browsing interface. Nothing else. --Ivan Štambuk 17:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    Please, use the enter key; most people won't read a wall of text, that including myself. Also, everyone on Wiktionary reserves the right to vote (within reason); proficiency in a language does not restrict my right, nor does it yours. I've read the debate, and after judging both sides, I have made my choice. Stop badgering the voters. –blurpeace (talk) 19:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    So which is it? Do you not read walls of text, or have you read the debate? Or have you simply picked and chosen what bits of it you want to read? My money's on this last one. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 19:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    ^_^ Blurpeace apparently doesn't understand at all the purpose of votes: this is not a device of democracy, merely a formal codification of elsewhere-established community consensus, which in its purely numerical output deprived of broader meta-analysis and implict context is completely worthless. That mode of operation mostly hasn't posed a problem for us in the past, due to the fact that it usually involved not that particularly important decisions, or better-said decisions not bound by the fetters of voters' ego, but in this case it certainly would, with all the FUD being spread here and elsewhere. The tone which permeates votes cast with comments such as "government-separated languages" speaks enough for itself, let alone the retort in which the voter didn't find it necessary to engage in productive discussion on his comment, as if it's something set in stone once and for all, not subject to analysis and comments of the others :) My apologies Blurpeace for stoning you with walls of texts; I just wanted to make sure that everybody is presented with all the details, and not those bits and pieces they gathered who-knows where :-) --Ivan Štambuk 20:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    I think the thing to do at this point is to switch the language of this discussion now to Serbo-Croatian. Then let that person (if there even is one) who believes that he speaks a Serbian, Bosnian, or Croatian that is distinct from the other S-H languages carry out his discussion in his own standard language, and then those of us who are competent to read the South Slavic languages can determine whether he is speaking a different language or just speaking Serbo-Croatian just like all the other 23 million native speakers of the language. —Stephen 21:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    That's a good suggestion. I am sure most opponents would struggle to make themselves incomprehensible to the other speakers. Although, like with any language separatist movement, the differences are deliberately highlighted, enhanced, rare or old words are introduced or words that were considered dialectal become standard or forgotten, become standard. It is not unsimilar how Ukrainian standard is now more oriented on Western Ukrainian dialects and Polish language but words that are too similar to Russian are removed from the active vocabulary. These "efforts" can eventually produce fruits but it will take time.

    I hope nobody minds external forum links. Here are forum rules written in Serbian (srpski), Croatian (hrvatski) and Bosnian (bosanski). I know that the rules were deliberately written in the specific varieties because I know some users vehemently oppose being grouped into one - Serbo-Croatian language. I am not an expert in Serbo-Croatian but I wonder if these rules are what Stephen has mentioned. Can someone say, if these texts are written in different languages? Here's the link: [7], search for srpski, hrvatski, bosanski. Anatoli 23:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    You can differentiate Serbian from B&C simply on using Ekavian word forms (sledeća : sljedeća, rečniku : rječniku). Bosnian translation is perfectly valid literary Croatian except for the two words: konsultovati (also Serbian; Croatian would prefer verbs on -irati > konzultirati, see the unification rationale), trougao "triangle" (also Serbian; Croatian would prefer trokut, although both of the words for "angle" ugao and kut are valid in standard Croatian). It appears that the persons writing these forum rules were not particularly literate as all of them have several obvious spelling mistakes, as well as really weird syntax constructs that are never used in practice. It appears that as if they were deliberately looking how to make them as different as possible, by syntactically rearranging the translated English original, or using different snynonymous words all of which are valid in all 3 standards (e.g. in the first sentence startati/startovati, započeti, otpočeti - all meaning "to start, begin") --Ivan Štambuk 23:37, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    In other words, they are all written in one language despite the Ekavian/Ijekavian difference and attempts to make them different? Are Bosnian/Croatian versions are also valid Serbian texts or the small diffences make them invalid? Anatoli 23:57, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

    Ekavian/Ijekavian difference can be a differing factor as e.g.the difference between rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciation of English, and variant word forms such as the derivational suffixes -irati ~ -ovati comparable to English -ise ~ -ize. In practice, not a communication obstacle and all of the native speakers recognize and understand them intuitively. Bosnian/Croatian texts would be differed from the corresponding Ijekavian Serbian (Serbian is standardized in both Ijekavian and Ekavian) in 2 words slavenski "Slavic" (Serbian would use slovenski) and korištenje "using" (Serbian would use korišćenje). There is also one difference in syntax: Serbian prefers da + present tense (tendency from Balkan Sprachbund), where B/C prefer the infinitive, but you cannot reflect that in a dictionary. But it's not those lexical/orthographical differences that matter. People really give overdue importance to them, missing the bigger picture: it's those thousands of inflectional and derivational morphemes that are identical in all of three standards, resulting from the fact that all are based on the same dialect (Neoštokavian). People tend to focus on lexical difference, but in languages that are relatively highly inflected as SC it is only of secondary concern. Is it really more important that [rʲêːtʃniːk] and [rêːtʃniːk] are written differently, but share the same accentuation and accentual paradigm (and there are much many and more complex of those in SC than in Russian!), and the same endings in 7 cases in 2 number? I think not. To conclude: as long as the grammar is 99% identical, they're the same language, and as long as the standards differ in details that are non-lexical (i.e. they don't introduce an intelligibility barrier), and can be intuitively grasped by the speakers, they're likely to stay such. --Ivan Štambuk 00:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

    @Opiaterein, ever heard of skimming? For example, The man skimmed the wall of text. @Ivan, I am fully aware of Wiktionary's functions, FYI. Allow me to ask, where is your so-called consensus? On the BP page, you seemingly cut off the discussion and jump to a vote. Therefore, I can only assume that you're looking for this "numerical output" to further your own point of view. Your apology is accepted; it's understandable that you wish to get your whole point across, even by reiterating information found on other pages, but please, attempt to be concise. –blurpeace (talk) 02:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

    Allow me to ask, where is your so-called consensus? - It was established among the SC contributors on various talk pages some ~ 4 months ago. You know, the people who actually speak the language, and who made some 50 000 edits on SC varieties' entries in the last 3 years. I'm glad that you ask though, better even then never.

    On the BP page, you seemingly cut off the discussion and jump to a vote. - As everyone can see, I was suggested to do so by several of the other editors. In the meantime, I personally grew extremely sick of Ullmann's sudden but perpetual Serbophobic FUDfest, him trying to introduce needless political overtones where there were none, and in that particular BP discussion (there were other ones) with just about everybody expressing the support for the merger proposal policy, methought it was best to cut the drama altogether by a vote.

    I can only assume that you're looking for this "numerical output" to further your own point of view. - what "point of view" are you on earth talking about ? Have you actually read what this proposal is about? I sincerely hope that you're not onto the Lmaltier's "NPOV" argument...we're being 100% NPOV as all the standard languages are being treated equally, simply under a different formatting scheme. The numerical output syntagm I mentioned was referring to the senselessness of evaluating the vote's outcome on the basis of relative equality of all votes cast, regardless who cast them, when and under who's direction, and not whatever you misunderstood it with. But it doesn't matter now.. PS: The "apology" was cynicism, in case you haven't noticed :P --Ivan Štambuk 04:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

    I see people debating back and forth, but nothing along the lines of consensus. You're are obviously pushing your own point of view vehemently. After you jumped to a vote, by which I can see no wide consensus for, you began speaking of crossing out votes and closing the vote itself, alongside badgering all that oppose your views. I did notice the cynicism, but I'm trying to assume as much good faith as possible through your dick like remarks. I'd rather not give a fuck, and update an entry. –blurpeace (talk) 05:07, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

    If you were intent on depicting yourself as an uncivilized barbarian, you were 100% succesful. Be polite, or be gone. --Ivan Štambuk 07:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

14. Oppose DianaKhanjila 16:37, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
15. Oppose Luka Krstulović 21:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC) Oppose, for several reasons, which I state in the following:

    I see this discussion has already taken its course. Unfortunately, as I was away I couldn't join until now so I hope some participants won't mind my possible redundant comments. I'll do my best not to repeat the previous discussions unless necessary. I wouldn’t like to start any new conflicts, but am simply trying to point out some arguments that were shadowed by unnecessary and unpleasant disputes, and I do hope this will not cause further ones.

    Most of the supporting participants state that the reasons for bringing such a proposal should be strictly linguistic and historical and should not in any way concern political or nationalistic opinions. Yet, these linguistic and historical aspects have (in my opinion) been modified to fit the arguments instead of being wholly considered and. Frankly, I don't see the unbiasedness in such an approach. Arguments repeated throughout the conversation are often unreferenced, while all of the opposing users were treated (almost automatically) in the same manner, unabling their opinions and ideas to be considered as potentially constructive and progressive. This has distanced us from a consensus, turning the discussion into a dispute. I don’t see how this could result with a fair decision.

    The history of the languages as distinct linguistic entities does not, in the comments, reach beyond XX century, most of the arguments reaching not earlier than the past 20 years since Yugoslavia started to dissolve. I hope to elaborate on that more clearly.

    The roots of attempts for “common” Croatian and Serbian language (which was to be used by other south Slavic peoples) dates back to 1830s. In those times, nations were trying to get rid of the foreign rule, and the standards for national languages were being set, to distinguish the national individuality. The Croats have been using three various dialects, each with a developed literature, so there was a time to decide about the official standard. The Serbs were also in process of deciding among dialects with richness of heritage. A basic agreement between Croatian and Serbian intellectuals was brought, to adopt a specific dialect as a common language of south Slavs. This may have worked for a while, but the language standards used among Croats and Serbs soon took their specific paths of development. The Croats have adopted the Ijekavian dialect, leaving aside the Ikavian and Ekavian, but the heritage of literature had shaped specific patterns of development. Among the Serbs, on the other side, the influence of teachers who have arrived from the north, from Vojvodina, was significant, and soon the Ekavian speech had prevailed, with some grammar and vocabulary specifics. One can say that this was a natural course of the language development. With the formation of first Yugoslavia, in 1918., came the official recognition of only one common language, initially repressing even Macedonian as a different language. Similar situation went on throughout the total Yugoslav period, until 1990. After that the two languages have continued to be regarded separately. It can be said that the official existence of only one common language was always imposed in some way, while any form of democratic plebiscite has always opted for a separate national language. It is not necessarily a “nationalism”, such is a situation at other European nations – everybody tends to have their own language recognized.

    Croatian and Serbian are inevitably two separate languages, that, due to close interferences and forced merges, share a great part of their vocabulary and grammar. It is very much true that native speakers of both languages are mutually intelligible, as well as to Bosniak/Montenegrian speakers, but such is a case with plenty other similar languages. Since their resuming of individual development (which had decreased their interference through media and other), these languages have continued to grow apart, gradually developing new vocabulary and adjusting to contemporary needs (like IT terminology and other).

    Stating that the official state of these languages, recognized by governments, is purely a political or nationalistic POV, and that it has nothing to do with the actual language, is way out of line. Such a way of discussion feels pretty biased, neglecting the live and evolving tissue of a language, its ability to grow and progress. If the merging in one language is imposed, then the individuality is denied, the freedom of expression is suppressed, and that is a serious thing. Due to the sensitive nature of this issue, that will necessarily be causing conflicts, and unresolved situation within Wictionary. There is really no call for that. After all, in the basis of Wiki lays the respect of individual idioms, as more of them are included then it had happened anywhere before.

    If we once again impose this viewpoint of considering those languages to be one single, despite their official status and very much existing differences, we go against the nature of the language forcing it to stagnate while it tends to evolve, forcing it to remain in the previously impelled form. I ask you not to rush and to reconsider this decision. Alternative solutions can be found if we achieve consensus and clearly consider all opinions and sides. --Luka Krstulović 21:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC):

    Hi Luka, your English has improved significantly since the last time I was speaking to you (I wonder who wrote the comment you signed :) How are things going on Croatian Wiktionary, still infinitesimal growth rate since I left? :)

    Some comments:

    • Arguments repeated throughout the conversation are often unreferenced.. - nonsense, I listed at list a dozen the most prominent living and dead Slavists (Vasmer, Dybo, Trubačev, Greenberg) and modern Wstern experts on Serbo Croatian (Browne, Naylor..). So far exactly nobody listed a single one that thinks that B/C/S/M are "different languages". Could you provide a reference on such Western Slavist, preferably not the ones on the HAZU's pay list? :) Why do you think you can't, is it because 1) there is an "evil conspiracy" against the Croats, who happened to speak the same language as the Serbs but call it differently, but the rest of the word doesn't give a ..., 2) they're all on evil "linguistic genocide" campaign, being brainwashed by the Serbs? :)
    • The Croats have adopted the Ijekavian dialect, leaving aside the Ikavian and Ekavian, but the heritage of literature had shaped specific patterns of development - and how come that despite these "specific patterns of development" "Serbian" and "Croatian" are still 100% mutually intelligible, and have 99% identical grammar? :) Thousands upon thousands of identical inflectional and derivational morphemes...wow, that must be a real coincidence. The sad truth that you are deliberetaly beeing silent on is that Croatian (Ijekavian) variety of Serbo-Croatian was by Croatian Vukovians (Broz, Maretić et al.) almost 90% standardized on Ijekavian Serbian material collected by Vuk Karadžić. Broz-Iveković's dictionary from 1901 had 85% headwords from the corpus of Serbian folk poems! (But nevertheless was titled Hrvatski rječnik "Croatian dictioanry" LoL). And that was by far the most influential Croatian dictionary of the 20th century! The same can be said for Maretić grammar of Serbo-Croatian, which Pranjković called "the best Croatian grammar ever written". And let me remind you that Croatian foremost's linguists (and Slavist and Indo-Europeanist) Ranko Matasović cited all of his headwords in his greatest work, called "Comparative grammar of Croatian", according to Broz-Iveković's dictionary! So as you see, it's impossible to separate those two, even if the separation is merely conventional, by name - historically they did not have "separate routes", but intricately connected and convergent ones, to the point that today you cannot write a comparative grammar of "Croatian" and not simoultaneously make it acomparative grammar of "Serbian" and every other codified Neoštokavian variety.
    • Among the Serbs, on the other side, the influence of teachers who have arrived from the north, from Vojvodina, was significant, and soon the Ekavian speech had prevailed - it prevailed because Ijekavian was chiefly spoken by Bosnian and Montegrin Serbs (and is still spoken by at least 2 million of them), and Ekavian is mostly used in "Serbia proper", so the Karadžić's reform was finally accepted in 1868 but on simple difference of choosing Ekavian variant.
    • One can say that this was a natural course of the language development. - Nonsense, there is no such thing as "natural course of development" in language standardization. At that period of 1850s 90% Croats didn't even speak Ijekavian Štokavian! Urban centrs were previously Kajakvian (e.g. the current capital Zagreb) or Čakavian (Split, Rijeka, Zadar..) - all of them now almost completely Štokavianized of course, that under the influence of media and schooling. People literally "un-learned" the language of their grand-grand-grand-fathers! If this is "natural course of development", you must redifine your notion of "natural"..
    • until 1990. After that the two languages have continued to be regarded separately. By whome exactly? Why all those American, Russian, Dutch etc. Slavist still continue to use the term Serbo-Croatian? Try going to IWoBA and advocating separate "Croatian language" to Kortlandt; he published hundreds of papers on it's prosody and accentuation, always calling Serbo-Croatian. He'd probably mock you to complete embarrassment in front of the intelignetsia of Balto-Slavic Studies, as all of them (except for Croatian linguists, of course), use the term Serbo-Croatian without problems, as they've been doing for decades.
    • It can be said that the official existence of only one common language was always imposed in some way - Nonsense, it was something that Croats wanted. During the Illyrian movement (taught in Croatian schools as "Croatian national revival" - but it had nothing to do with Croats, as most of its protagonists were in fact non-Croats), they sought to create a language for all of the South Slavs! They used e.g. <ě> sign to abstract away differnt jat reflexes (which are non-lexical anyway). In 1850 the Vienna Literary Agreement was signed by some of the foremost contemporary Croatian intellectuals to discuss on how to combine the literatures of Serbs and Croats, opting for Ijekavian Štokavian dialect. Only later the Serbs switched to Ekavian. It was something that they wanted, not that was "imposed", as Croat nationalists like to imagine. For 70 years after that meeting the deal was finally settled by Croatian Vukovians (ethnic Croats!) who wrote influential grammas and dictionaries (still used!) whose intent was primarily to norm upon one literary dialect - a task which they succeeded.
    • while any form of democratic plebiscite has always opted for a separate national language. - Untrue, made-up claim. There was never such thing.
    • It is not necessarily a “nationalism”, such is a situation at other European nations – everybody tends to have their own language recognized. - yes, I've read on some movements to promote "Belgian language", and "Swiss language" recently...
    • Croatian and Serbian are inevitably two separate languages, that, due to close interferences and forced merges, share a great part of their vocabulary and grammar. - let's be honest and say how much: 99% grammar and 99% of vocabulary, if you ignore non-lexical differences in orthography (historija : istorija; kemija : hemija etc.).
    • It is very much true that native speakers of both languages are mutually intelligible, as well as to Bosniak/Montenegrian speakers, but such is a case with plenty other similar languages - Untrue, Greenberg in his book says that this is unparalled situation in the world's languages, that 3 or 4 standards are based on identical dialect. There are other Slavic languages that are mutually intelligible to some extent (e.g. Bulgarian/Macedonian, Slovak/Czech), but these are all based on different dialects. Slovak and Czech have different endings in inflection, different phonology and alphabet...in SC varieties, this is all exactly the same. It's pointless to downplay the similarities (or should I say exactities ^_^) Krstuloviću, there are 4-5 native speakers supportive of the proposal here that will confirm everything I write, and we all very well know :)
    • Since their resuming of individual development (which had decreased their interference through media and other), these languages have continued to grow apart - Oh, and why are Bosnian and Serbian TV shows still broadcasted on Croatian television channels, Bosnian and Serbian movies still played in Croatian cinemas, all without subtitles? :) Why do Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Wikipedias "steal" thousands of articles among each other, trivially adopting them when "translating" from e.g. "Croatian" to "Bosnian"? :) Some 200-300 000 Serbian tourists will visit Croatia this summer, do you think they will also influence the course of this "individual development" ? :)
    • Stating that the official state of these languages, recognized by governments, is purely a political or nationalistic POV, and that it has nothing to do with the actual language, is way out of line - Tell that to Wayles Browne, Frederik Kortlandt, Vladimir Dybo... The fact is that there was officially only one language, and to which ISO granted only one ISO code - sh, and only later when these new "languages" were fabricated in the 1990s (at different times, not all at once) additional codes were assigned. Today there is the fabrication of "Montenegrin language" in progress - the problem with it is that is also 99.9% valid Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian at the same time. SIL merely satisfies requests by language institutions, it doesn't influence the linguistic circles at all, as B/C/S are all still treated collectively by all the foreign uni courses (as it is impossible to learn "Croatian" and not "Bosnian" or "Serbian"), and all non-amateur handbooks and learning materials.
    • After all, in the basis of Wiki lays the respect of individual idioms, as more of them are included then it had happened anywhere before. - Note that are respecting individual idioms by this proposal, none is given preference. We are simply treating the common core at one L2 sections for pragmatic reasons, because this brain-damaged PHP software doesn't allow any other more useful approach, and after some ~ 9 000 ==Croatian== words I personally added to Wiktionary I've grown quite tired to copy/paste (or force poor Dijan to do so) it to ==Bosnian== and ==Serbian==. The approach of using ==Serbo-Croatian== section is 100% NPOV as no standard language is given preference.

    Ivan, I greatly appreciate it that you didn't force me to do anything! :P I'm sorry for not being more involved lately. University and work have received a bit more attention this summer, but I hope to contribute a lot more soon. --Dijan 03:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

    • If we once again impose this viewpoint of considering those languages to be one single, - again you use the subliminally misleadingwords such as impose. We are not imposing that standard B/C/S/M are one language! How many times do I have to repeat that :) We're simply treating them at one L2 sections for the purposes of convenience. This has absolutely nothing to do with Yugoslavia, Vukovians, Četniks, Ustaši etc. - we might as well use the section name ==BCSM== one day if there is a need for that. We're trying to ignore the "different/same languages" issue altogether (or at least try to, too many have been indoctrinated to see this merger as a "political issue" so it's kind of hard), but when it is mentioned (usually on the basis of argument: is it possible to treat them collectively, and to what extant are the standards "different") I have to respond, because it's usually ignorant FUD :) --Ivan Štambuk 22:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

16. Oppose Kasmil 09:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
17. Oppose Rising Sun 19:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC). I understand this vote is for the sake of convenience for Wiktionarians, not political or genocidal, and does not mean we think all the languages are the same, but as it has been mentioned before, I wouldn't like to restrict people who wish to add entries in Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian, or restrict people who wish to add entries in Serbo-Croatian. For my part, Wiktionary can (should?) be an "open house" (within reason - and B/S/C have ISO codes so they're welcome in this house). --Rising Sun 19:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    That's a valid concern, but as has been said, there are simply no such editors. All the regular and semi-regular SC contributors agree on the merger, and those who presumably vehemently wouldn't will probably never contribute to Wiktionary in the first place, as they haven't made appearance for the 4 years of Wiktionary's existence. The question that you who are "against forbidding languages" must ask yourselves is: Are you rather in favor of quasi-NPOV scheme that will support imaginary contributors but make Wiktionary 10 times less convenient for both the SC language learners (of either variety, or all of them at once, as SC is usually taught) and the regular SC contributors, or a convenient scheme whose only (!) disadvantage is to potentially drive away people like Pelsi Lite and Krstulović, who are more intent to promote non-existing "differences" and ethnic hatred than to actually spend a significant amount of time making a Wiktionary a better place. There is no middle ground between those two options, it's pointless to have both B/C/S and the merged SC entry: people don't contribute SC entries here to promote a particular political PoV on the issue, and I (and assure you the others) couldn't simply "ignore" if I saw e.g. someone adding a ==Croatian== entry on the page that already has ==Serbo-Croatian==, but only partial one and with errors: I'd feel obliged to amend it, and the vicious circle of wasteful editing will be reintroduced, but this time with even more pointless multiplication of identical content.. --Ivan Štambuk 19:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

18. strong Oppose--Ex13 20:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    Oh look, another hit-and-run. (Why do these people care so much about a project to which they've yet to contribute? Do they plan on sticking around after the vote?) — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 20:46, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    Of course, the supporters are much, much more eager to contribute, and they would surely not leave after having voted in for support. -- Prince Kassad 20:49, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    Of course we would leave. --Dijan 03:49, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

    In case you haven't noticed, a number of native Serbo-Croatian speakers supporting the unification effort have expressed their wish to further contribute to this project had this vote succeeded. At any case, their vote, deprived of nationalist bigotry and coming from a native spakear, or speaker of other related Slavic language (they're all very similar), is surely much, much more valuable than that coming from a person who doesn't have any proficiency in any Slavic language, and such a linguistic profile sadly dominates the opposing clique. --Ivan Štambuk 22:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    My comment is here, and much more comments you can read on croatian wikipedia. Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian languages are not the same --Ex13 20:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    Of course they're not the same language, they're merely 99% identical. Does this proposal insinuate that they are the same language? It doesn't. It says that, given that they're baed on the identical dialect, having 95% identical lexis and 99% identical grammar, it would be extremely wasteful time- and space-wise to treat them separately, and as a native spaker who actually contributed some ~10 000 entries of various SC varieties at separate L2 sections which eventually got simply copy/pasted, I have quite a credibility to back that statement up.

    And who is Ex13? New sockpuppet of Suradnik13, who is apparently as Serbophobic as RU: m:Requests_for_comment/Croatian_Wikipedia_-_User_Suradnik13_-_blocking_and_deleting. His commonet: "Please write in Croatian, because some of users find it hard to follow what you are writing in Serbian" ^_^ Please read the comments on the linked discusson posted by user Dzordzm at the WP:AGF section, to realize how ridiculous that statement is. Is this the type of user you are concerned about DCDuring? :-) --Ivan Štambuk 22:44, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

    On my en:user page writes who I am. Please dont call me Serbophopic, because you dont know what I am. Have you ever heard about Wiktionary:No personal attacks. Obviously not. You forgot that you had been blocked on hr:wiki for a year, also on hr:wiktionary, the reason was "Personal attack". As I see you have not changed at all your behavior. --Ex13 07:15, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

    Your statements on alleged "difficulty in understanding Serbian" pretty much says everything, as well as the frustrations in reading "Serbian" Vikipedija instead of "Croatian" Wikipedija. I mean - WTF, just one letter, the one that is not even a part of Croatian alphabet?! As for my "blocking" on hr wikis - those "obstructing" and "personal attacks" were just petty excuses to drive away the "unwanted" contributors. Every year 4-5 superb contributors leavs Croatian Wikipedia for good out of disgust for actions of your hive-mind - or you simply block them. That's why you've been under internal investigation, and hopefully will be under one more very soon now that you've managed to drive away Ante Perković, as he as a former admin can testify first-hand on all of your internal defamation practices. --Ivan Štambuk 07:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

    Ha ha ha i'm under invetigation? Ha ha ha and who investigate me? And you forgoted who had blocked you? Maybe Ante Perkovic? Same ex-checkuser against which you give the evidence to Arbcom few days ago. And why you discuss about me? On Wiktionary:No personal attacks it clearly says: "Comment on content, not on the contributor." You are admin here, right? You should to know that. --Ex13 09:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

    AP's CU activities were against the privacy rules. He did numerous casual CU requests on users he simply "imagined" to be somebody. CU is an extremely delicate privilege and should not be abused the way he did. On English WP he would've been desysoped for that kind of behavior instantly. On Croatian Wikipedia things work out unfortunately in a quite different manner. Yes Perković blocked me (among others), he is not that different from the rest of your nationalist clique, at least when it comes to paranoia and AGF. However, now that he suffered from your organised defamation and humiliation, I assure you that he would be much more eager to cooperate :D I'm simply mentioning you as an example of the person with 0 contribs here, but "potential contributor", as some of the folks here have expressed their concern that the types of users such as yourself would be driven way if this policy were adopted, and I'm merely illustrating on what kind of real "loss" it would be. Nothing personal ;) --Ivan Štambuk 09:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

19. strong Oppose -- Kubura 03:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC) Many users from Wikipedia in Croatian didn't want to contribute to Wikipedia project in the beginning because it had the name of Serbo-Croatian. Since Wikipedia in Croatian has started, many people joined. So, if that merge happens, you'll have massive abandoning of Wikipedia project (from the side of users of those languages). On the contrary, Wikipedia in so-called "Serbo-Croatian" has very slow growth in number of users, compared to other South Slavic Wikipedias. Further, terms like "bcs" and "Serbo-Croatian" is heavy insult towards speakers of Croatian. Uninformed person can expect violent reaction or refusal of further communication. During times of Yugoslavia, "Serbo-Croatian" was name for Serbian, part of project of artificial merging of Croatian and Serbian at the expense of Croatian. Persons were imprisoned and etiquetted for using of pure or etiquetted Croatian words or simply for the "spreading the difference of Croatian and Serbian". Further, project of Wikipedia has to respect the separate development of all South Slavic languages (Croatian, Montenegrin, Bosniac, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian). These languages have their own development, putting them together is ignoring of that fact. Montenegrin language has recently got its ortography. Wikipedia is not allowed to impose its own solutions. Read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Further, the proposer of this "merging", Ivan Štambuk has wrote following on my discussion page on the en.wiki, [8]"I'd really like to know in what scenario have Serbian and Croatian managed to have "separate lines of development", but managed to share 99% of grammar (phonology exactly the same, trivial differences in morphology & syntax)". I've promptly replied him with the source and citations (work of an eminent linguist and Academy of Sciences member) [9], ones he should have read if he wanted to be meritory discutant. That much about his credibility as an expert in the matters of these languages. And his reaction to that was calling me "troll" [10]. I've warned him on his behaviour twice [11], [12]. But he began to threaten me here on Wiktionary. BTW, he has iniciated the discussion, and after my first ever edit here he has threatened me with blocking because of "trolling" [13]. Dear users, you have to check the profile of the proposer, before doing anything according to its ideas. Finally, see one message above "(Sooner or l8r some of the opposing clique will start canvassing on nationalist wikipedias, so it's reasonably assume that there'll be more of these). --Ivan Štambuk 07:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC) ". How can he etiquette certain Wikipedias with so heavy accusation as "nationalist"? How can he use the word "canvassing"? Doesn't he find it as decent and honest to notify the concerned Wikipedian communities, that there's an ongoing voting on the merging that'll abolish their Wiktionaries? Kubura 03:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
    • So, if that merge happens, you'll have massive abandoning of Wikipedia project - We can't have "massive abandonging" since there are no such contributors Kuburo. They haven't made appearance for the last 4 years, except for poking their noses now when they "oppose" from their nationalist holes, and leaving for good.
    • terms like "bcs" and "Serbo-Croatian" is heavy insult towards speakers of Croatian. - that's BS, we have 4 native Croats voting for unification. Why are you lying Kubura?
    • During times of Yugoslavia, "Serbo-Croatian" was name for Serbian, part of project of artificial merging of Croatian and Serbian at the expense of Croatian. - BS, please see w:Serbo-Croatian language and realize that Kubura is deliberatly lying
    • Persons were imprisoned and etiquetted for using of pure or etiquetted Croatian words or simply for the "spreading the difference of Croatian and Serbian". - because the "pure Croatian" was a hallmark of NDH Ustaši regime, and using "pure words" became associated with extreme Croatian nationalism. Like the words were heavily coined in the 1990s during the Tuđman's dictatorship, but hopefully never really caught on.
    • project of Wikipedia has to respect the separate development of all South Slavic languages (Croatian, Montenegrin, Bosniac, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian). - How exactly is treating 3/4 standards simply as one language section "not respecting them"? Are we suggesting that they are not 3/4 different standards? No. This is simply a formatting concern where we're treating the common core (the 99% of grammar) the same way. There is no "suppression" of either standard, or givin prominence to either of them.
    • These languages have their own development, putting them together is ignoring of that fact. - Behold! The central dogma of modern Croatian Studies! "Croatian" and "Serbian" have had the "separate routes of development", and somehow have identical phonology, and inflection of nouns, adjectives, verbs....what are the odds for that!
    • Montenegrin language has recently got its ortography. - it's exactly the same "old" Serbo-Croatian orthography with 2 new letters marking optional allophones that could be trivially adapted into the proposal.
    • Wikipedia is not allowed to impose its own solutions - I'm sorry what are you talking about?
    • I've promptly replied him with the source and citations (work of an eminent linguist and Academy of Sciences member) [6], ones he should have read if he wanted to be meritory discutant - those "eminent scientists" have no clue what they're talking about. I've told you Kuburo, I could list a dozen 100 times more relevant world's Slavist than Brozović that treat SC as one language. What about them? See below for the links I've given to Polansky. The way you're discussing is classical deliberate trolling, making logical fallacies. See w:Argument from authority. It's moreover extremely funny that you ignore all the sources except the ones you blindly believe in, which can be seen on the content-forking article on this imaginary "Central South Slavic diasystem" that you've been unsuccessfully trying to restore on English Wikipedia many times. To you the greatest Croatian linguist R. Matasović was "amateur" just because he dismissed the absurd concept of CSSD advocated by Brozović et al.
    • And his reaction to that was calling me "troll" - you are a first-class troll on Croatian and English Wikipedia and pretty much everyone who ever engaged with you can confirm this. Even folks on meta called you trolls. You're pathological Serbophobe that can rarely be seen. In your 4 messages on Wiktioanry you've produced nothing but hatred. Do you really want me to excerpt & translate the statements you've made on Croatian Wikipedia here? People are not accustomed to large amounts of Balkanic nationalism, it would make their stomach hurt. --Ivan Štambuk 06:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
20. strong Oppose Is this a joke ? There is no (and there had never been) a "Serbo-Croatian" language as a real entity, just a temporarily acknowledged political construct- as there had not existed Hindi-Urdu, Malay-Indonesian or Bulgarian-Macedonian; the only difference being that "Hindi-Urdu" & other phantasms have been lucky enough to escape being voodoo-materialized by various ideological language commissars. There is no country in the world where this supposed language is spoken (Croatian in Croatia, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian in Serbia and Montenegrin and Serbian in Montenegro). No "Serbo-Croatian" anywhere. I'd be grateful that this ludicrous topic be deleted as soon as possible, since mere counting of votes by various outsiders is irrelevant: as a member of Croatian Wiki project, I would suggest: just ask Cro-Wiki sys admins et al. & you'll get a unanimous resounding NO to even to begin to discuss this idea, which belongs to the history's dustbin, along with Flat-Earthers & Alien abductions addicts. Mir Harven 17:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    Sorry Mr. Loser, but your account was created today and you have no contribution record. Your vote is nul :) — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    One should not that MH is actually a very smart guy (I know him from hr WP and many Internet fora), but unfortunately infected with nationalism disease :) If he were on the "other size", heh... --Ivan Štambuk 17:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    Serbo-Croatian varieties are much more similar than examples you mention. We already basically treat Hindi and Urdu as one language (they link to one other in the inflection line), but it's not 100% convenient to unify them at a single header since they're written in different scripts (Arabic and Devanagari). Bulgarian and Macedonian have never been treated as "one language". Standard Bulgarian and Macedonian have quite a few differences in grammar (in phonology, and in inflection and accentuation - Bulgarian has free accent as SC whilst Macedonian has fixed on antepenultimate syllable; - SC varieties are all based on the same 4-accent Neoštokavian system and have identical 99% identical inflection of nouns/adjectives/verbs and identical phonemic inventory in alphabets that basically map 1:1). Dunno about Malay and Indonesionan though. As for "no country in the world" - According to the official Croatian censi data there were several thousands people who signed to speak SC [14]. I don't know abut official Serbian and B&H data, but I suspect that there would be even more given that they are quite less "Yugoslavophobic" than an average Croat. Also dear MP, please cut your arrogance a bit, you have nothing to be arrogant about. If you have constructive comments on why this unified treatment wouldn't work, feel free to elaborate on them on the respective talkpages.

    Also as for the Croatian Wiki - they've already been noticed, and some of them voted in case you haven't noticed. So far basically none of them gave an actual argument why this shouldn't be done other then "some Croats imagine that they are different languages". I mean realy MH, you very-well know that 99% of Western Slavists still treat standard B/C/S as one language, they are always taught together at the professional- and uni-level courses (like Hindi and Urdu), and have common grammars and dictionaries. Be it "BCS", "Serbo-Croatian" or whatever.

    Also, this is not about politics at all, but about formatting. We are not "forbidding" or "forcing" any solutions, simply include everything under a single header out of convenience. We'll probably change the header name to "BCS(M)" later by a bot once we work out some technical details which are currently under discussion. So it would be very much appreciated if you would cut the political nonsense no one here is interested in. --Ivan Štambuk 17:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

21. Oppose no Zombie-ism: Ygoslavia is dead. Forever. RIP. No linguuistic Necrophilia, please!--Croq 18:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
22. Oppose Godemir 18:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC) This is just one more desperate attempt of Yugoslav nationalists to keep their zombie Yugoslavia alive at least on the Internet when they failed to do so in reality. So called Serbo-Croatian language is not a linguistic issue but strictly political. This artificial language is made solely for one purpose and that is destroying Croatian nation and culture and melting it into Yugoslav (read Serbian). It is nothing more than a horrible weapon of special war against Croats and if we had to be quiet before under communist oppression today is the time to end this charade once and for all. Croatian language is an independent language just like French, German, Swedish or Russian and if somebody wants to deny that fact then we could all just replace Romance languages with Latin language and its codes, they are mutually intelligible just like any Slavic languages, and even more. It is the same logic.

    Neither of the most recent two voters have made one edit until this vote since their accounts were created. I wonder how they found it? — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:30, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    Obviously canvassed by Croatian nationalist bigots. Observe the strictly political "explanation" on why these are "different languages". Only a complete ignorant (or a very malicious person) can compare the difference between B/C/S to the differences between Romance languages (which diverged ~1500 years ago). Do French and Italian have the same inflection of nouns, adjectives and verbs? No they don't... Do they have the same phonology? No they don't... Do they have the same extremely-complicated accentual system? No they don't... At any case, their votes won't matter in the end, but it's fun to have them here; I think that they're making all the regulars who voted for oppose very uncomfortable :D --Ivan Štambuk 19:46, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    I rather hope so... I for one wouldn't want to be in the same boat as these people. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 20:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

23. Strong oppose--Roberta F. 21:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    This is another user canvassed from Croatian Wikipedia (where she is a regular), with 0 edits in the NS:0 ---Ivan Štambuk 22:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

    Yeah, right, and this is an old wiktionary user: Special:Contributions/Maria_Sieglinda_von_Nudeldorf, you haven't called her here. And how you dare (or who gave you right) to call oponents of your idea canvassed users? Is it personal attack? Or anybody who is against your proposition is open for your attacks? If I recall it right, wiki has a rule called assume good faith. Or maybe such rule doesn't apply here, or just for Ivan Štambuk? --Roberta F. 00:28, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    We have a user who has recruited his friends to vote against this, and also tried to get around the community vote by getting "outsiders" for lack of a better word to say something about it. I suspect him of emailing users from Croatian wikipedia and wiktionary to "warn" them about this "genocidal crime against humanity" of a vote. Good faith is dead in the context of this vote. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Dear Roberta: I haven't "called" Maria here. My first interaction with that user was on the exact day she voted! I did make here aware of the ongoing vote by e-mail, and she asked me whether she could vote, and I was about to say "no" but she already did. At any case, I think her vote is very impotant, even if not counted in the overall closing, simply because she is a Croat, and furthermore also a university professor of medicine, which proves even more than the alleged "Serbian connotations" that the supportive vote would bring are simply a result of somebody's dishonest FUD.

    Note also that Wiktionary has quite different practice from Wikipedia when it comes to "assume good faith". Here we block IPs and users (indefinitely!) after 1-2 malicious edits (WP-style "warning levels" proved to be a complete waste of time), and esp. when it comes to contributors that are otherwise notorious for, let's just say, misbehaving. Also, I don't see how calling you a canvassed user is a personal attack: it's merely self-evident observation of facts. Perhaps I should've written "this user is a regular on Croatian WP, and is likely to have come here by the same channels as Ex13 & Kubura", but anyways. If you were truly offended, please receive my sincere apologies. --Ivan Štambuk 01:18, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

24. Oppose Jcwf 01:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC) Although I would welcome if the Croatians, Montenegrins, Bosnians and Serbians would do what Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese have done and create a Language Union, I am afraid that time is long in the future, if ever. (This is also to say that they are not ready to be Europeans. Sorry Croatians...) I also do not think that others can force them to change their minds. In fact that will only have the opposite effect. Although I mostly edit at nl.wiktionary, I do think I contribute enough here I can voice my opinion and vote, if only because I am a European. Jcwf 01:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Are you completely aware what exactly are we voting on? On a draft policy that has been in practice for the past 4 months, applied by all of the Wiktionary's (semi-)regular Croat, Serb and Bosniak contributors. We never had the "opposite effect" in practice; in fact this vote is the only place we had any conflict on it at all, and those by people who never contributed a single SC entry at Wiktionary. --Ivan Štambuk 01:23, 8 August 2009 (UTC

    I am very, very completely aware of your hothead nature mr. Štambuk. That is exactly the problem here. Intolerant people that have no respect for any other person's opinion. Like you. And yes the Balkans are teeming with them.... Jcwf 01:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    You now speak of tolerance, and your first comment on the proposal (after RU's Serbophobic remark) was derogatory "Will this Balkan people ever learn anything". Sapienti sat. --Ivan Štambuk 11:31, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

25. Oppose --Zeljko 01:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Zeljko is a regular contributor on Croatia Wikipedia and likely came here by the same channels as Kubura, Ex13 and Roberta F. --Ivan Štambuk 01:23, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

26. Strong oppose What a "brite" idea, where is melting pot?? --Vhorvat 03:56, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
27. Oppose This is nonsense!--Niks 08:22, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Oppose 188.129.78.189 10:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC) Nonsense. It's actually the opposite, Serbo-Croatian "language" was invented for political reasons.

28. Oppose Two different nations, two different languages. My arguments on de.wiki are here, and here. Read also [15]. --Flopy 10:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Does any of you actually have a single argument why the unified approach wouldn't work? Flopy, we don't care whether they are separate or the same "language" (we don't care at all; I personally think that they are though, but as I sad, that just my little PoV :P), we are voting on whether it makes sense to treat them collectively at the same header or not in a dictionary. So please spare us of historical tirades! --Ivan Štambuk 11:31, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

29. Oppose Budalaštine--Fausto-Ilirik 18:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Budalaštine su ovi tzv. "jezici" izmišljeni 90-ih. --Ivan Štambuk 18:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

30. Oppose (yet another canvassed-nationalist-whatever vote) --Mario Žamić 19:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Correct. --Ivan Štambuk 20:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Nice to meet you. --Mario Žamić 20:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    The pleasure is all mine ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 20:08, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Oppose Not only does the official gramar differs but also speaking habits, errors they make between these 2 people are different. These 2 languages are becoming more distant to each other and it seems to be completey natural process. — This unsigned comment was added by 82.132.13.116 (talk) at 14:07, August 8, 2009.

    Grammars of standard B/C/S differ less then 1%. Inflection of nouns, verbs and adjectives is 99.9% the same. There is no evidence of "growing more distant" - actually quite the opposite trend can be seen (radical-nationalist attempts in the 1990s during the Tuđman's hardline nationalist regime to promote more neologisms have been mostly ridiculed by the common people, and never succeeded). --Ivan Štambuk 12:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    OK, so it is all the dirty deeds of nationalists. Whatever.

    • It should also be noticed that all of the above votes were canvassed by Roberta F. on Croatian Wikipedia. Apparently these nationalists think that their numerical 0-contribs "strong oppose" matters. Note that all of them express they political belief, and not linguistic state of affairs, as not single one of them has provided a single piece of evidence why the common treatment wouldn't work. Moreover, they completely ignore it, mentioning "communists", "Yugoslavia"...and whatnot. --Ivan Štambuk 13:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Speaking of Croatian Wikipedia, you were blocked over there numerous times so far including a 1-year block. Kurtelacić 01:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

    Yeah, me and dozens of others superb contributors that were unfit for Croatian WikiMafia and were driven away. Ever since I've migrated to English wikiprojects (en WP & WT primarily), I've been having no problems at all with blocks. Curious, heh? --Ivan Štambuk 01:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

    Please, Ivan, don't misrepresent things. Don't say false information. Roberta F. has informed the Croatian Wikipedian community (the community affected by this voting! - destiny of one Wiktionary is being decided on the page of another Wiktionary???) about the ongoing voting. She gave no suggestions how to vote. She informed whole community equally, not selectively (on the page WP:Kafić = en:WP:Village pump). She wrote: "Ako nekoga zanima na engleskom Wječniku suradnik Ivan Štambuk, koji je tamo administrator, pokrenuo je glasovanje: [16] o ujedinjavanju srpskog i hrvatskog.". Translation: "If someone is interested, user Ivan Štambuk has on the English Wiktionary (he's the administrator there) started the voting [[17]] about unifying of Serbian and Croatian". Have you ever read the rule WP:CANVASS? There's the first paragraph called "Friendly notices". It says: "Neutrally worded notifications sent to a few editors are considered "friendly notices" if they seem intended to improve rather than to influence a discussion.". So, this is not canvassing. Ivan, you're an admin. You're supposed to know that. But instead, you've etiquetted user Roberta F. and presented her as an canvasser. Please, read w:WP:ETIQ and w:WP:CANVASS. Kubura 09:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

    As you quote, she basically wrote "Ivan Štambuk wants to unify Croatian and Serbian language on English Wiktionary", which is absurd and we don't want to do anything like that. What we are doing is voting on the equal common treatment of all 3 (4) national standards. We're not trying to "promote" any kind of common "standard Serbo-Croatian", only to be descriptive of existing standards in the most possible convenient way. In case you haven't noticed a bulk of people voting oppose here are under the impression of exactly the opposite, that we are promoting some kind of "Serbo-Croatian of Yugoslavia", which is far, far from truth. If that is not the evidence of bad-faith canvassing, I don't know what is :P Also Kubura, you're the last person to preach me on etiquetting... On the talkpage you have your good old acquaintance Mir Harven calling me "Yugo-chauvinist" and "commie agitator" - why don't you preach wiki-etiquetting to him? --Ivan Štambuk 09:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

31. Oppose what a nonsense --SveroH 20:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Have you actually bothered to read what are you voting on? Note that the gloss given by Roberta F. at the Croatian Wikiedia ("Ivan Štambuk wants to unite Croatian and Serbian language") is a lie. So far we've successfully merged thousands of entries, and nobody of the opposing clique gave a single argument why it wouldn't work, or sth. --Ivan Štambuk 20:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Strong oppose There is absolutely no sense in using language that doesn't exist. There is no Serbo-Croatian language. Thus, there shouldn't one on Wiki either. --Domagoj Horvat 23:10, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Please read the the actual policy we're voting on. We are using the header name ==Serbo-Croatian== or ==BCS== simply as a generic container for all 4 national variants. We do not care whether they are one or separate languages (there are various criteria on that). --Ivan Štambuk 21:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

32. Strong oppose 1001st time trying to do about same thing. This is nonsense. Different nations, different language, different words ... There are some words that are same in English and Serbian ... so why we don't merge them too ? They are same too, aren't ? --Саша Стефановић 23:07, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

    Serbian and English don't have identical phonology and 99% identical inflectional/derivational grammar, like standard B/C/S do. Once again, we are not voting on whether they are "different languages" or not (we don't care at all), but simply on whether it makes sense formatting them at one language header. There is absolutely nothing "nonsensical" in the proposal: it's perfectly logical and intuitive, following the line of other English-SC-English dictionaries such as Morton-Benson. If you have particular objections on why this shouldn't work, please raise them at the proposal's talkpage, and don't spread dishonest cynical FUD. --Ivan Štambuk 23:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

33. Oppose per my earlier comments[18][19][20] on the matter. --Dungodung 23:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
34. Oppose Sharingham 00:27, 9 August 2009 (UTC)The arguments and "arguments" have been rehashed ad nauseam, so there is no point in my, or anyone else's, trying to provide several semesters' worth of free linguistics education here. In any case I am too old for this s*** and have a life. I am therefore simply registering my vote and hoping against hope that we will be spared the umpteenth iteration of the "99% identical" or "languages made up in the 90s" nonsense, which is offensive enough on a cognitive level, never mind any others.

    Could you please focus on the proposal itself and provide some real arguments on why the common treatment of all 4 national standards wouldnt't work? --Ivan Štambuk 01:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

35. Oppose , makes absolutely no sense. --Modzzak 09:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

    Could you please be more specific on what exactly "makes absolutely no sense"? So far we've successfully merged thousands of entries and everything works perfectly fine. It's important to be specific', not make such general comments. --Ivan Štambuk 09:33, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

36. Strong oppose --Braco 10:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
37. Oppose because dialogue with proposer is impossible. --Millosh 13:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
38. Oppose, as a native speaker of Serbian language. These languages simply do diverge ever more. Setting them under same bell with etiquette of a yet failed language project I would consider an insult, as Dungodung has yet stated. 本 Михајло ^{_[ talk _]} 17:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

    Slažem se. Mi Srbi i Hrvati pričamo totalno različitim jezicima i uopće se nismo u stanju razum(j)eti, a kamoli pisati zajedničke r(j)ečnike. Evo, ja nisam siguran ni u kojem jeziku ovo pišem. (ij)ekavski srpski, hrvatski, hrvatsko-srpski, srpsko-hrvatski..joj, već mi glava puca. --Ivan Štambuk 00:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

39. Oppose The notion is ridiculous. Maybe this one already mentioned piece of information just passed by so let's stress it again. As there is no Serbo-Croatia by that there is no Serbo-Croatian language. Even while there was a country that maybe could have been considered Serbo-Croatian not even then was it a language but a pure political construct invented much like a brand of some corporation would be. It is not a language in Serbia, it is not a language in Croatia. For instance English is - in USA, in Britain, in Canada. Were it to happen that suddenly Canadian schools started teaching Canadian children Canadian language what would happen then – I suppose Canadian language would have to be introduced to wiki with all the references and implications that followed. If it were not, wiki would just be obsolete and outdated. It is really weird and difficult to comprehend why is it that going 20 years back is considered updating!? - Random (that's me, don't know how to sign myself. Cheers)

    Wow. So, by your logic, since there is no country called Engl, there can be no English language. Maybe we could use ==Yugoslavic== or ==Yugoslavian== instead of Serbo-Croatian. If you read closely, the above user contradicted him/herself, as I'm sure users before have. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 23:49, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

    Yeah, not to mention Sanskrit or Latin ^_^ Actually, the IP's quasi-analogy on he supposed "Canadian language" pretty much proves in the eyes of everyone rational that B/C/S are linguistically one language. --Ivan Štambuk 00:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    It's hard to tell here at which part the level of rationality amazes more, whether it be the invention of the imaginary land called, well duh... England, or the notion of comparing Serbo-Croatian political construct that is linguistically - nothing, with Latin language. The arguments you are trying to make indicate you have no clue whatsoever you are talking about. I understand you are unwilling to contribute to separate Croatian or Serbian or whichever headers or whatnot and the solution is simple - don't. There is no extra work here, contribute to the ones you prefer and leave others be, what is the problem. The upper paragraph you wrote in Croatian (yep, its clear where you are from when read) indicates which one it should be but then you never know. By the way, even Serbo-Croatian was not taught in former Yugoslavia in case you were wondering. It was taught in Serbia. In Croatia, it was Croato-Serbian. Doesn't it make you wonder why it had a different name? In fact calling it Serbo-Croatian is an obvious insult to the Croatian part since that language wasn't taught in Croatia even during Yugoslavia.--Random77.237.112.140 01:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    Serbo-Croatian is definietly not a mere "politiacal construct", because that language had dictionaries, grammars, orthographies...for more than a century. Standard B/C/S can only be sociolinguistically treated as "different languages" - linguistically they're doubtless one language (the Neoštokavian dialect). They have identical phonology, identical accentuation system, 99% identical inflection (the only differences are the orthographic conventions imaću ~ imat ću, zadatci ~ zadaci etc.; not the actually spoken ones). I am a native speaker of Serbo-Croatian who posses superb knowledge of the language, so your silly accusations such as "you have no clue whatsoever you are talking about" can only make you look dumb, so please keep that in mind. And dear lord, what exactly is "Croatian" in the upper paragraph; that I used opće instead of opšte ? Whoops, there are million+ non-Croats that speak opće, but I guess that they didn't teach you that at the classes of hrvacki jezik. What was taught in the federal state of Croatia during the period of SFRJ is ardent Vukovian Serbo-Croatian, under the name hrvatskosrpski: the terms Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian were synonymous, Serbs used the former Croats the latter, all in order not to give prominence to either of the ethnic component of the name; in English language OTOH, only the term Serbo-Croatian gained usage, and is still very much used.

    At any case, your completely missed the points, like many of the other opposing voters: this has abs. nothing to do with Yugoslavia, politics and all that jazz: this is merely a formatting convention to treat 3 (or 4) different standards (or "languages") at one header ==Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian== (currently ==Serbo-Croatian==, but we'll change that). We don't give undue prominence to either of them (all under 100% NPOV), don't prescribe/proscribe anything, and are 100% descriptive of the modern usage of language. Can it be done? Yes. Why shouldn't we do it? I have yet to hear a satisfying argument on that one, other that "a minority of Croats/Serbs would fill insulted by the notion that they speak 100% mutually intelligible languages". --Ivan Štambuk 02:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    You are deluding yourself if you believe you are a speaker of Serbo-Croatian. You guessed it, since there is no such thing... The fact is if you approached any Serbian speaking person talking the way you did in the upper paragraph they would know you are speaking Croatian. As would any Croatian instantly recognize a Serbian speaking person. The only way a Serbian could mask himself would be to learn Croatian which would make him both Serbian and Croatian speaker of course and not a Serbo-Croatian speaker, and that happens to be a fact I am quite sure you are aware of but choose to deny to what end - I really don't care.

    Serbo-Croatian was never a language but a pure political propaganda. A concept that is today dead as dead can be and not Latin-dead but a complete different dimension of dead. It was a project that only worked to the outside world, since not even 50 years of forcing the thing did manage to merge the languages and they are different in spite of the unification attempts that were artificially imposed on the natural developments of the two. And that's a part of the problem as the unification did not succeed, albait making them closer but the force that caused that is now no more, and its not that putting them under one header 20 years after the process of unification irreversibly ended is an insult - its that its blatantly incorrect. You are not being descriptive, you are just being wrong. The choice you are making is:

    a)To make it easier to manage technically

    b)To make it correct

    If its hard for you to make it correctly then don't do it at all. It would be much less of an intellectual crime that's for sure. It would be like from now on wikipedia starts cataloging every olympic athletic gold medalist who originates east of Berlin as an USSR athlete. Hey, it would be easier to manage. -Random77.237.112.140 03:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    Wow I'm "deluding myself"...didn't know that. Perhaps I've been bilingual/trilingual/quadrilingual since birth, simultaneously speaking Bosnian/Serbian/Montengrin when talking to my Bosniak/Serb/Montenegrin frieds? :) An acquaintance of mine, a Serb from Slavonia, speaks opći instead of Church Slavonicism opšti...he must be a Croat! :D

    I already asked you dude, please spare me of boring quasi-linguistic-politcal tirades; if you have any kind of comments on why this merger wouldn't work in theory, please raise the relevant points on the talkpage. No one here believes your cheep propaganda that "SC was never a language", because you know, there are some 7-8 folks here who claim otherwise, from kids to uni professors, and not to mention hundreds of dictionaries, grammars and orthography books that that language had and still has :) Actually by the very fact that you mention the perverted analogy with "Canadian language" you actually support the merger, as you've been de facto saying that "Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are all political not linguistic constructs"!

    So once again: B/C/S are all based on the identical dialect (the Neoštokavian idiom); they have identical phonology, identical accentuation system, 99% identical inflection, and from the lexicographer's perspective, it would be insane to try anything else than common treatment. It's impossible to learn "Croatian" or "Bosnian" and not to learn "Serbian" at the same time. We have a mountain of reasons why we should apply the common-treatment approach, and I'm still waiting for some of the opposers to illuminate me on why on it technically could not be done, when these languages are oh-so-different (like Italian and French, sb mentioned :) Arguments dude, not empty prose and your "testimonies", nb here believes anyway.. --Ivan Štambuk 09:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    Holy deluded bilingual gods Batman. So you have a friend who is a Serbian and raised in Croatia and can talk both Serbian and Croatian. No way dude. You know I have a friend's cousin who is raised in Canada and can speak both English and Croatian. Far out. And you know what else, I can understand Slovak language when spoken slowly without ever having learned it. And you know what else, a Norwegian can understand a conversation between a Dane and a Swede without ever learning Danish or Swedish.

    Your notions are so full of ridiculousness and strawmaning its incredible. Many UI professors omg... To bad none of them are from the universities that actually teach the languages.

    You know you keep losing yourself, one could call it trolling. First you claim this proposal is not about the languages being different or not but you keep defending it by saying that they are. So I am confused what is it then, is it about just managing headers or is it about claiming Serbian and Croatian are the same language?

    If it is the former than its just a matter of incorrect management, and if it is the latter than you are just wrong according to all relevant universities, states, organizations and institutions (it's a done deal, they are recognized as separate languages) and all your rambling about it is silly. -Random77.237.100.95 12:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    "can talk both Serbian and Croatian" - ROFL. The next time I see him I'll tell him that some IP from Croatia claims that he is "bilingual". Dude, can't you see how ridiculous your nationalist bigotry makes you look like?

    I sincerely doubt that you can understand Slovak to a significant degree unless you've learned it. Serbo-Croatian is partly mutually intelligible with Slovene and Bularian/Macedonian (other South Slavic languages), but lot less so with other East and West Slavic languages. You can perhaps understand some bits and pieces from Slovak and other Slavic languages, but comparing it with Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian is insultive to human intelligence, as these have 99% identical grammar. Same goes for Scandinavian languages which despite heaving lots of intelligiblity, have huge differences in grammar and lexis (we even had to separate on Wiktionary the 2 standard varieties of Norwegian, Nynorsk and Bokmal, because they significantly differ in inflection).

    Don't worry, I have e-mails from professors who teach SC on American unis, some of whom and also happen to work as professional Slavists and translators, publish grammars and dictionaries on it, and who corroborate abs. everything I said. Wait for the following vote for the next episode of this ridiculous saga (codenamed: Na kojem ovo jeziku pišem?) ;)

    It depends on your notion of "language": in sociolinguistic sense they're different, in genetic-dialectal they're not. This vote tries to make peace with both of those senses in a NPOV way. It's primarily focused on managing headers, to make the job significantly easier for both the learners and contributors. Whether "Serbian" and "Croatian" are the "same language" or not (whatever that means) - we couldn't care less. All we want to do is to cut the ridiculous amount of pointless redundancy by 3-5 times.

    Oh really, can you point me to some Western unis that teach separate courses on "Bosnian", "Croatian" and "Serbian" ? Can you show me a professional western (Balto-)Slavist or etymologist that think that these are "3 different languages" in a non-sociolinguistic sense? I've listed dozens of them here and elsewhere that think just the opposite. Please no more absurd FUD. --Ivan Štambuk 13:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    You can tell your friend whatever you like it is as it is, and that is that he is bilingual if he is able to speak two languages, and illiterate if the 'language' he speaks is Serbo-Croatian. As everywhere, a bilingual is a person who speaks two languages were it Serbian + English, Serbian + German or Serbian + Croatian. And the only way that can happen is if one learned them. You may try with all your heart to get something from nothing, but if Croatian is your native tongue you are not bilingual until you learn Serbian or an other language, and if Serbian is your native tongue you are not bilingual until you learn Croatian or any other language.

    You know I have also seen many people who will for a fee sell you a secret ancient knowledge that will improve your physical, psychological, mental, internal, external, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular stamina, make you invincible, healthy, irresistible to women, stronger than Chuck Norris and improve your good fortune all at once. But that does not necessarily make it so. In fact you can be pretty sure it won't. As well to teach you two languages at once in a single course named as the combination of the two. Facts still remain that after the completion of a (foreign mostly) Serbo-Croat course if you come to Croatia you will be recognized as a Serbian speaker after uttering two sentences, and after the completion of a Croatian course when you come to Serbia you will be recognized as a Croatian speaker after the same time period.

    As well as the fact also stands that they are recognized as two separate languages by every relevant institution worldwide or universities within their respective countries. Any scholar, professional or otherwise, that decides not to take that fact as a decisive factor is charlatan at best, to restrain from using any harsher words.

    Many libraries acros the world still use joint headers and there is a clear reason why it is so. Because it costs money to change them. Any of them would change it immediately if somebody freely gave away money and resourses to do it.

    So lets take a look at the situation on Wiktionary. You are trying to go in the opposite direction. You are trying to revert back while already having in effect a system that any and every institution would willingly embrace if the means were provided.

    And that really is... mindbogling. -Random 89.201.135.95 00:42, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

    Again, I ask specific questions, and all I get is ignorant, unreferenced FUD. <sigh>

    Once again: standard Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, and soon-coming Montenegrin, are all based on the identical dialect, the Neoštokavian. From the perspective of dialectology and genetic linguistics, these standards are doubtless one language; that is a fact embraced by both the foreign and local Slavists. For example, from the recent issue of the magazine Kolo, published by the top Croatian cultural institution Matica hrvatska, in an article written by one of Croatian top linguists Mate Kapović: Dijalekatski gledano, hrvatski su i srpski nedvojbeno jedan jezik.^[21] "From the dialectological perspective, Croatian and Serbian are doubtless one language". From the perspective of sociolingustics, however, they are different languages, as they have standards that are directed by different national bodies. These standards overlap immensely - in some 99% of overall grammar (phonology, accentuation, inflection - the only 3 parts a dictionary is interested in), and, in the words of mr. Kapović (Ph.D. in comparative Balto-Slavic linguistics, mind you!): Postoji i realna potreba da za standardni hrvatski, srpski, bošnjački i crnogorski jezik postoji i jedan sveobuhvatni naziv. "There is a real need to encompass standard Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin all in one term". That's exactly what we are doing.

    Standard B/C/S are taught together on basically all of the Western universities (I have yet to see the ones which have separate courses on them!), all the English-languge university-level and translation-level handbooks, grammars and dictionaries always treat them collectively, and it is impossible to learn only "Croatian language", and not to simultaneously be able to understand/read standard Bosnian and Serbian too. Our primary focus are language learners, people who'll look up the word and ask themselves "is this valid B/C/S, is it standard word or regionalism". We don't care for politically defined "recognitions" of a language - they do not present a valid schoalrly reference, and neither do your personal opinions and imagination. --Ivan Štambuk 01:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

40. Strong oppose. I'm one of admins who allegedly blocked Ivan Štambuk just to drive away the "unwanted" contributors., and I see lately that he haven't changed his behaviour a bit, harsh language for everybody who opposes him (Croatian nationalist bigots). But anyways, I took my time to read Wiktionary:Entry layout explained and Wiktionary:About Serbo-Croatian according to Wikipedia policy Wiktionary:Assume good faith before going through this mess (and everybody of a sound mind can after 2-3 minutes of reading this page say that this vote is not a polite exchange of arguments, but a real mess). And what I have found? Already second sentence in above proposed policy is a lie, Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language spoken prevalently in modern-day states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. is simply not true, and anybody who care to check, can see for himself definition of Serbo-Croatian language on en wiki (or any other language wiki). I could explain my vote further, but from what I saw on this page I don't see any sense for it, because real sources which nobody could deny would be overlooked/discarded, or maybe I will just be called canvassed user and a nationalist bigot who just hit-and-run's on this project. Who would want to contribute to project if your first contribution is met with scorn? Have some dignity for god's sake! SpeedyGonsales 15:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    I scorn those who treat this project as if it were a political tool rather than a linguistic one. At any rate, I don't think you understood the context of my comment. You haven't been around for the whole vote to see the ridiculous kinds of bullshit that have gone on. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    Dear SpeedyGonsales, the usage of the term Serbo-Croatian in the disputed sentence you quote above is in the sense "generic container for all of the referred national standards". Please see WT:ASH#Introduction: "The term Serbo-Croatian on Wiktionary acts as a generic container to all 4 national varieties." So if either of the national varieties is spoken in each of the individual countries, it logically follows that the language used as an umbrella term for all of them applies to all the countries all the individually encompassed terms refer to. Note also that it does not state that all of the national varieties are "the same language" or sth. The whole policy more-or less actually deals with the differences among them! Our usage of the term Serbo-Croatian has abs. nothing to do with the official SC of SFRJ on which is the Wikipedia article, the one with 2 varieties: we're focusing exclusively on modern B/C/S/M standards.

    You are welcome to contribute here, and to comment on the voted policy, but it would be highly recommended that you refrain from personal attacks on the users (namely me) esp. with reference to other FL wikiprojects which we don't care for. If you have any kind of particular problems with the policy please state it (e.g. "I don't think it's feasible because..", "I don't like the wording...", "How would you solve the difference between..."). That's the only thing we are interested in. --Ivan Štambuk 15:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

41. Strongly oppose. This vote must be a joke. Does not reflect reality. If Wikipedia was democratic, this could only be treated as a lunatic attempt by neurotic nostalgics. Wikipedia should remain neutral. This page here should have never created. At least, no reasonable scientist would ever think about merging what need not be merged. My first and lasting sentiment: shameful... --Maestral 17:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    And in reality, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin are 4 completely "different languages", that just happen to have 99% identical grammar by historical accident, huh? Also, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and you are way above the incivility threshold with that "yugonostalgic" nonsense. If we asked the top scholars in the field in the first place, these standards would've been merged long time ago, but unfortunately the knowledgeable men like me always arrive a bit too late.. --Ivan Štambuk 17:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    1. Wikipedia isn't democratic.
    2. This isn't Wikipedia. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 19:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

    I agree all these have same root. But we do disagree this root has to be named by some Serbo-Croatian nonsense. 本 Михајло ^{_[ talk _]} 10:43, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

42. Strong oppose.--Jure Grm, 10. day of August in Year of Our Lord Twotousandandnine, at 19:31 o'clock.
43. Strong oppose.--frk@ 08:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
44. Strong oppose -- Neno Koš 10:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
45. Strongly oppose - do tih "99% sličnosti" si došao nekim istraživanjem, ili onako, odokativno? --zhile 08:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

    _{Translation: "An to this "99% of similarity" you arrived by some research, or by free estimate" ?}

    All of the 3 (4) standards are based on the same dialect (the Neoštokavian). Of things a dictionary is concerned with, they share:

    1. Identical phonology: I.e., the same phonemic inventory, and the sounds that are mapped by the 2 alphabets (which have 1:1 correspondence)
    2. Identical accentuation system: 2-way pitch accent system with post-tonic lengths. There are some differences between the standards, but the overall system (which is extremely elaborate BTW) is the same. In other words, pronunciations would be shared: If I made IPA transcription or a sound file for one word, e.g. (deprecated template usage) knjiga, it would be shared between all the 3 (4) standards.
    3. Inflectional morphology (for nouns, adjectives, verbs ) is also basically identical. This includes 7 cases, 2 numbers and 3 genders for nouns and adjectives, 3 persons and 2 numbers in 3 synthetic and 4 analytic tenses for verbs. The only real differences are merely orthographical conventions that are not reflected in actually spoken language. E.g. Croatian standard writes Future I tense as imat ću whilst B/S write imaću; both are pronounced exactly the same way. Such cases are handled trivially inside the appropriate inflection templates ({{sh-conj}} in this case)
    4. Derivational morphology is 99% identical. Some 5-6 suffixes out of thousands shared are markedly non-Croatian (-če, -ija, -ka, -isati/-ovati etc. - though a number of them have attested usage by Croatian writers), and that's pretty much it.

    The merger proposal takes all of these differences among standards into consideration: please read the proposed WT:ASH policy and the accompanying talkpage rationale. --Ivan Štambuk 12:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

46. Strong oppose Iconda 12:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
47. --Saxum 15:13, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
48. Strong oppose: Nonsense. -- F.Pavkovic 22:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
49. Strong oppose --Demicx 13:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
50. Oppose Serbo-Croatian never got off the ground in the first place. Trying to resurrect it here would detach the Wiktionary from reality on the ground, create heaps of trouble down the road and would eventually have to be corrected back to what most speakers and non-speakers accept as true - that while the languages involved are similar, they are by no means one language, and should not be treated as such by anyone, anywhere. --Elephantus 15:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

    Hi Elephantus. Please read the actual policy we're voting on, this has abs. nothing to do with Serbo-Croatian of SFRJ, and we're merely using that term as a generic container for 3 (4) modern-day national standards. B/C/S are different langauges only in standardological sense (they're maintained by different institutions), but dialectally they're one language (the Neoštokavian dialect), and since they share 99% of their grammar it would be very convenient for us end the users to format them commonly. Almost all English-language courses treat them together and we're merely following that practice. --Ivan Štambuk 16:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

    I'm afraid it's a badly thought-out policy proposal. Using a charged term that has slowly but surely been receeding into obsolescence for some very good reasons as a generic container on Wiktionary is misguided. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are very similar languages too, and there is no policy on putting entries for those languages together, or using terms like Dano-Norwegian etc. even though there is some unavoidable duplication. --Elephantus 16:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

    I've repeated this already sth like 100 times, but here's a quick explanation for you alone:

    • The policy is well-thought and tested on thousands of words which were merged trivially. It takes into consideration all the variant forms of the same word that differ among the standards, and provides easy means to combine them into a single entry, so that they can be easily navigated amongst. If you have any kind of specific complaints, where exactly this wouldn't work, please specify it either here or on the policy's talkpage.
    • The term Serbo-Croatian will probably be replaced by Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, we're waiting for this vote to end so that we can reiterate it (and change various other points in dispute) after we decide on that. As for the term itself - it is still widely used in English-speaking world (e.g. Britannica), by top scholars in the field of Slavic studies, and no convenient substitute can be found (the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin is ridiculously cumbersome). It is also used by SIL/ISO as a macrolanguage identifier, under which B/C/S are classified. English-speaking users who'd presumably be using Wiktionary to learn SC would in 99% of cases feel no political prejudice at all to the term, as opposed to some of the native nationalist who associate it with the times of Communist Yugoslavia (despite the fact that the term is at least a century older, *sigh*).
    • Danish/Swedish/Norwegian are 100 more different than B/C/S varieties. Please. We even had to separate two standard varieties of Norwegian here (Nynorsk and Bokmal) because they significantly differ in inflection (which was confirmed by knowledgeable native speakers from Norwegian Wiktioanary we invited). B/C/S are all based on the identical dialect, have identical phonology, accentuation system, the same inflection (mostly differences in orthography that can be trivially handled within the inflection templates), and that's pretty much everything we're interested in of grammar.
    • We already tried the "separate" approach for 4 years, and got to the unified track after we finally realized how absurd the quadriplication of content in some 95% of cases is (in the rest of 5% cases you merely get duplication or triplication). Now with soon-coming Montenegrin, which is standardized in both of the alphabets, you'll get six identical entries for Ijekavian SC. That would be insane and uneccaptable. Instead, we treat them all collectively, and use context labels to differ among the standards. This greatly optimizes both the editing and using experience. --Ivan Štambuk 17:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

    I'm sorry, but the policy is unbalanced, tries to impose a single viewpoint and seems a bit hurried in tone. There is no global shortage of disk space or bandwith to justify these conservation efforts. I've read other policies on single languages and they aren't nearly as controversial in content as this proposal. This appears to be an attempt of issue hijack by a strong-minded "evangelist". While such things can sometimes be very useful, they should be constructive and not destructive. Removing entries on Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian words and replacing them with a single Serbo-Croatian entry seems destructive to me. If there is potential for controversy, just add Serbo-Croatian to the other entries. Live and let live looks like the best policy in issues like these. If it appears to you that speakers of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are suffering from collective delusion and you're the only sane person in a mental asylum, maybe you should remember the story about a man driving down the highway in the wrong direction and listening to the radio announcement. :-) --Elephantus 18:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

    I think you're missing the point that the meaningful differences are not between "Serbian", "Croatian" and "Bosnian", but between Ekavian, Ijekavian and whatever else there is ^_^ — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:36, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

    Again, can you please be more specific what exactly is "unbalanced", what "single viewpoint" are we imposing (the truth is none exactly, all the 3 standards are treated equally) what specifically lokos "hurried"? Please state your complains in specific terms and not some ambigous remarks that are worthless to us.

    No there is no "shortage of disk space or bandwidth", but there is of user and contributor's time. We don't separate American, British, Australian, Canadian, Indian and African English varieties, even though we could in theory. It's pointless to have 4-5 increase in identical copy/pasted content. Had you spent enough time actually contributing them, as Dijan, myself and others have, you'd know better.

    Again, what exactly is "destructive" ? Please don't use such abusive terms without arguments. Do we forbid a single Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian word? No we don't. Do we "force" to be labeled Croatian something that is Serbian-only? No we don't. Absolutely everything is treated 100% NPOV. The only thing we are destructive against is the pointless time- and space-wasting duplication.

    No "live and let live" approach does not make sense if you want to write a dictionary that the people will actually use. There is not a single dictionary in the world that simultanously has Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian treated separately. It's always either combined or completely separate of one of them. Since this is multinlingual dictionary we ony have the first option if we want to get it right.

    Your cynism on my mental health is not appreciated, please be civil and refrain from insultive anecdotes. Again, we are not "driving against the current", we're actually flowing along with it, as BCS are treated collectively in basically all English-langauge uni-level courses, all have the same grammars, dictionaries etc. Hundreds of Slavists still treat them as one language only. The only "mental asylum" I can see is that in which the young people in those little Balkanic puppet-states live, thinking that their nationalist worldview is shared by the rest of the planet, which it isn't. See the recent discussion in Kafić for some of their imagination, what is a "Serbian word" and what is a "Croatian word". They're simply hopeless cases.

    B/C/S are all based on the same dialect, thus are the same language; they share identical phonology, accentuation system and 99% of inflection, which makes them linguistically one and the same language, different only in sociolingusitical (=political) perspective. The only real differences worth mentionging are in orthography, some derivational and borrowing patterns, and jat reflexes, 99% of which are non-lexical (i.e. they do not induce a communication barrier). That's the fact my friend, whether you want to accept it or not, and it's pointless to circle around it as we're not that naive. Only the truth will set you free, remember --Ivan Štambuk 21:38, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Abstain

• Abstain Dan Polansky 07:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC) On the following consideration:
  • Pro: The examples of speech given in W:Differences_between_standard_Croatian,_Serbian_and_Bosnian#Language sample suggest that the languages (or dialects, sublanguages, varieties, whatnot) planned to be merged are rather close in spelling, much closer than the criterion of mutual intelligibility alone would suggest.
  • Pro: All the Wiktionary contributors to B/C/S/M support the move, including Ivan Štambuk, Dijan and Bogorm
  • Pro: Testimony by Stephen G. Brown
  • Con: Absent external citations with one exception[22], supplemented by argumentation and personal testimonials
  • Con: The usage of two scripts by the languages
  • Quasi-con: The rhetorical, opponents-accusing language of some of the supporters of Serbo-Croatian
  • Unclassified: ISO has separate codes for the invidiual languages or varieties, allegedly for political reasons.
  • Unclassified: Tbot is going to have problems with "sh", allegedly.[23]

  --Dan Polansky 07:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

  • Daniel I already mentioned plenty of eminent Western Slavists on that BP discussion that are treating SC as one language in their publications (etymological dictionaries, papers, grammars etc.). I noted that Vermeer's paper as an example where modern-day Slavists sometimes feel the need to "justify" the usage of the term Serbo-Croatian, which they haven't felt obliged to do before. Vermeer's fellow Slavists from "Leiden school" like Frederik Kortlandt and Rick Derksen use the term Serbo-Croatian without a discussion. E.g. Kortlandt in this paper (From Serbo-Croatian to Indo-European) and Derksen in his Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon (quoting from Introduction, p. 19: "The name “Serbo-Croatian” will occasionally be used as a generic designation for all varieties of the language spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Montenegro. The abbreviation “SCr.”, however, refers in principle to neo-Štokavian, i.e. to those Štokavian dialects that underwent the neo-Štokavian retraction of the stress. A prominent example is the language that was codified by Vuk Karadžić and Đuro Daničić in the 19th century and subsequently became the basis of normative grammars and dictionaries, for instance the Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (RJA)."). Russian Slavists (another major group) never gave up on the usage of the term Serbo-Croatian AFAIK (including all the major comparativists/etymologists like Illič-Svityč, Vasmer, Trubačev, Dybo..). Of English-speaking Western Slavists you can read the chapter on SC written by Wayles Browne in 1991, just about when these new "languages" were being forged, and which is to this day the best overview of SC grammar in English. The most comprehensive (and basically the only professional) SC/English dictionary dictionary is Morton-Benson, which still uses Serbo-Croatian in its title in newer editions/reprints. There is plenty of external evidence that supports still alive usage of the term Serbo-Croatian in English language, not only by common people but by the most eminent scholars.

  Thank you for providing scholarly sources. I repost them as a bulleted list in which each source is identified by its author and its title:

  • Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, by Rick Derksen, Ph.D., Leiden University, 2008
  • FROM SERBO-CROATIAN TO INDO-EUROPEAN, by Frederik Kortlandt, Leiden University, 2005
  • SerboCroatian-English Dictionary Set, by Morton-Benson, Cambridge University Press; 3rd Revised edition edition, 1990
  • The Slavonic Languages by Bernard Comrie, Greville G. Corbett, 2002, chapter on Serbo-Croatian

  The natural question is, what about scholarly sources that oppose the view? --Dan Polansky 12:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

  These "opposing" views are almost exclusively from respective B/C/S linguists. Their basic argument is "people can call their language by every name their choose". The basic problem with that argument is that 20+ years ago (i.e. before the disintegration of Yugoslavia) in censi data most people claimed to be speaking "Serbo-Croatian", and 200+ years ago (i.e. before the modern concepts of nations emerged) most notable writers on the area called their language simply "Slavic" or "Illyrian", and specific ethnical designations like "Croatian" or "Serbian" had but negligible use. Moreover, it was in the crucial 19th century that venerable pan-Slavic visionaries decided to standardize on an identical and common idiom (c.f. e.g. Vienna Literary Agreement) - and that was Ijekavian Neoštokavian (later Serbs switched to Ekavian). If you look at this table, you'll see that this Eastern Herzgovinian (=Ijekavian) is in fact the only dialect shared by all 4 ethnicities! So it's kind of silly to attach labels to it as "Croatian", "Bosnian" etc. Often the B/C/S linguists try to create an illusion that e.g. modern Croatian is simply an ethno-cultural continuation of Medieval Croatian, and that the fact that Serbs, Bosniaks and Montengrins happen to share the same dialect, and use it as a base of standard language, is of no concern to them. This is also false as modern Croatian was standardized in the crucial period of late 19th century on the dictionary (by Broz & Iveković) and grammar (by Maretić) written by ardent Croatian Vukovians (followers of energetic Serbian amateur linguist and folklorist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić), and who used mostly (>90% of words) corpus of Serbian folk tales and poetry for their works, which were collected by Karadžić. In a completely opposite direction, Serbian linguo-nationalists claim(ed) that Croats "stole" Ijekavian Neoštokavian dialect from them, as only a minority of Croats spoke it before the 19th century (when standardization, schooling and media caused a massive spread of the literary dialect - before that, the territory of Croatia was extremely dialectally diversified). But, as it turns out, even if spoken by a minority of Croats, 95% of everything written in Štokavian vernaculars before the 19th century is a part of Croatian literary heritage (Serbs use several artificial literary languages before Karadžić came into scene - e.g. Slavoserbian). Some extremist Bosniak linguist have similarly absurd ideas, why Neoštokavian is more "Bosnian" rather then "Croatian" or "Serbian".. So you see, there are many opposing views by many B/C/S scholars, but all of them are fundamentally flawed because they are not based on sane, objective criteria. From the perspective of dialectology and genetic linguistics, there is really only one 1 language - stylized form of Neoštokavian dialect, in 2 varieties differing only in minor details such as jat reflexes (comparable to rhotic/non-rhotic English), some derivational morphology (comparable to -ise/-ize English) and lexis (comparable to English truck/lorry, autumn/fall..). Furthermore, we're simply using the term Serbo-Croatian as it is the most prevalent English term for it (constructions such as "BCS" can hardly pass as L2 language name...), not because we want to "revive" SC of Yugoslavia. For a recent thorough overview of the problem you can read Greenberg's book from which I provided an excerpt on the proposal's talkpage (it's very cynical and fun at times), or read much more brief Sociolinguisic Commentary on Google Books by Ronelle Alexander, in his recently published grammar of SC. --Ivan Štambuk 13:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

  I am asking for facts and links to scholarly sources, not for a commentary. I am asking for verifiable statements, not for your subjective personal exposition and explanation, which is unverifiable for me, and which looks superficially suspect for the use of non-descriptive words such as "sane" and "insane". --Dan Polansky 08:26, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  Pardon me for wasting my time and knowledge on some "subjective commentary", while trying to summarize to you something that would otherwise require reading a mountain of literature, most of it not in English. Everything I say is easily verifiable and I can cite you plenty of sources for it. If you suspect that anything I wrote is doubtful, just ask for references and they'll be provided. --Ivan (talk) 11:10, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  If you actually can cite plenty of sources written in English, you have the option of actually doing so, the option of providing an extensive bullet-formatted list of references to scholarly articles or book chapters written in English, both those that support your views and those that oppose your views. --Dan Polansky 07:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  Well I could do that (and I would've appreciated had you mentioned that earlier, before the vote was started), but the major problem with your proposal is that there is pretty much no objective peer-reviewed scholarly references in English that support the treatment of SC as "different languages". Foreign scholars are simply not that subject to narrow-minded nationalism and historical reinterpretations. Perhaps you could ask Robert Ullmann, Lmaltier or DCDURING to get you these? ^_^ I can only cite you (and have already cited plenty of) references which treat SC as one language. --Ivan Štambuk 07:45, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  Four linked references is not what I call "plenty of". This kind of inaccuracy does not inspire trust in your account of how things are. --Dan Polansky 08:26, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  "Four"? There are the four that you organized into a bulleted list, and then the two that he presented in a later comment. I'd say that six linked references is, in fact, "plenty". If you're interested enough to read all six of them, then you should be interested enough to take five minutes and search Google Books for yourself. I'm sure he could add more (as could I, for that matter, just from the bit of b.g.c. searching I've done, though unlike Ivan I couldn't vouch for their credibility), but to be honest, you don't actually seem open to being convinced. And that's your right, obviously. But it seems unkind to continue pressing for more and more references until eventually acknowledging that you're not actually interested in them. (I'm sure that's not what you're trying to do, but that's how it looks from here.) —Ruakh_TALK 12:07, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  I mentioned at least dozen of names of the most renowned Slavists of the 20 century. But since you insist so much, I can do it explicitly, by work:

  • Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika ('Etymological dictionary of SC'), 2-volume, 1971-1973 (published post mortem) - by the greatest Yugoslav etymologists Petar Skok. Still the best and the most comprehensive SC etymological dictionary. All variant forms from SC dialects are treated together, and the language is called SC.
  • Russisches etymologisches Worterbuch ('Etymological dictionary of Russian'), 3-volume, 1950-58, by Max Vasmer, the greatest Slavic etymologist of the 20th century. It is primarily etymological dictionary of Russian, but contains enormous amount of cognates in other Slavic languages. When mentioning SC, it treats it of course as one language, referring primarily to standard Neoštokavian idiom (the primary meaning of the term Serbo-Croatian), as well as sometimes to dialectal data (archaic Čakavian dialect). Vasmer's some other works such as the book Die griechischen Lehnwörter im Serbokroatischen ('Greek loanwords in SC', Berlin 1944) also corroborate his view of SC as one language.
  • Expanded and commented version of Vasmer's dictionary was subsequently translated to Russian and republished as Этимологический словарь русского языка, 4 volumes, 1964-73, by Oleg Trubačev, the greatest Russian etymologist of the 20th century, in which he also treats SC cognates as all being one language (including all the subliterary dialects).
  • Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon [24], 2008, by Rick Derksen, published in the IEED series. He also treats SC as one language (including all the dialects), as I cited above from this work.

  These above are the major etymological dictionaries of Slavic languages ever published. Since there is only one of them in English ever published, I listed a few other major ones in SC itself, German and Russian. Some of the major reference/grammar works that treat SC as one language are:

  • The Slavonic Languages, Routledge 1993, 1078 pages, edited by Comrie & Corbett, in it namely the chapter on Serbo-Croatian, written by the greatest Western expert on SC Wayles Browne. Browne has a degrees from MIT and Harvard, and also Ph.D. from the University of Zagreb (Croatia!) where he wrote a thesis on SC generative syntax. This big book is de facto a standard reference on Slavic languages in English language, and Browne's overview of SC grammar in it is by far the most authoritative sketch of SC grammar in English (article on him on WP has some of the reviews)
  • The Slavic languages, by Sussex & Cubberley, Cambridge 2006, 638 pages - another extensive survey of Slavic languages, but in a comparative approach. It treats SC as single language throughout the text, mostly under the name "B/C/S". Quoting from p. 505: In this book we have consistently treated B/C/S as a language on the grounds that the major variants are still formally and functionally close enough to constitute a single entity.

  Of university-level handbooks, as well as introductory grammars intended for language learners (as opposed to the previously listed ones which are intended for specialists):

  • Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar With Sociolinguistic Commentary, 2006, 464 pages, by Ronelle Alexander. As is more then obvious from the book's title, it treats B/C/S collectively, not as "different languages", but as one language in 3 different standards with differences explained throughout the text as the concepts are gradually introduced. This brings us back to to my earlier point that it's pointless for an English (or any other FL) speaker to learn "Croatian", and simultaneously ignore "Bosnian" and "Serbian". Quoting from the preface of the book, page xvii: This book is about the language that used to be called Serbo-Croatian. When Yugoslavia split up into separate component states, this one language was replaced by the three languages now known as Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Thus, they're but mere different names of the same thing. The book has a dictionary of SC words at the end, and - you can guess, they are all listed in one index, and not separated in 3 different indexes.
  • Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language, 1995, 658 pages, by Thomas F. Magner. Quoting from the preface of the fifth printing, from 1998, page ix:

  

  The title of this book contains the words Croatian and Serbian Language and indeed that terminology is used throughout the book along with references to the country of Yugoslavia. However, two major changes have occurred since the Penn State Press first published this book in 1991: (1) Croatian authorities have declared that Croatian is a separate Slavic language; and (2) the name Yugoslavia now denotes only Serbia and Montenegro since Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia are now independent political entities, recognized as a separate countries by the United Nations.
  
  The designation of speech variety as a distinct language can be the result of a political decision and not necessarily a linguistic judgement. There is a greater difference between British English and American English than between Croatian and Serbian, but there exists no political or parochial movement that would proclaim American English to be a language distinct from British English. The correspondence of Croatian and Serbian sounds, vocabulary, nominal declension, verb conjugations, and syntactic formations ranges from 95 percent to 100 percent and no Serb, Croat, or Bosnian Moslem toady would have any difficulty in communicating, one with the other.
  
  When did Croatian become a separate language? Croatian philologists contend that it has been a separate language for centuries but that its existence and development have been distorted by constraints and norms imposed by the more numerous Serbs. For those not affected by nationalistic passions, it is reasonable to date the birth of the mdoern Croatian language as June 25, 1991, the date on which Croatia (and Slovenia) declared its independence from Yugoslavia.

  

  There is little to add to above quote. The author of the this great grammar clearly mocks with the concept of "Croatian language". Throughout the book, the author refers to the language by an abbreviation "Cr&S", in fact another way of saying "Serbo-Croatian". I could only add the following:

  1. The standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian have identical phonology (same phonemic inventory, and orthoepical norm). This is way more than the differences in British and American English (not to mention other Englishes), which we treat as the same language ==English==.
  2. The inflection of inflective PoS is identical for nouns, verbs and adjectives. I think that the numerals up to 4 are not inflected in standard Serbian but they are in Croatian - and that's the only major difference. In verbs the only exception is in the Future I verbs whose infinitive ends in -ti, but that difference is only in spelling (in 1 letter) - they're pronounced identically in standard Serbian and Croatian. It's pointless to multiply identical inflection templates, when it could all be handled gracefully in one central place.
  3. Differences in syntax are of no concern to us as we are writing a dictionary. Perhaps only as ====Usage notes==== with some characteristic words.

  There are some other works, but these are much smaller in volume, hence less comprehensive in coverage, and written by less prominent individuals, lacking the necessary big-picture perspective. E.g. this one. The two above are the major works for university-level courses and ambitious learners aiming to near-native proficciency in language.

  The major sociolinguistic commentary on the SC is the already mentioned:

  • Language and identity in the Balkans - Serbo-Croatian and its Disintegration, Oxford 2004, 188 pages, by a notable Slavist Robert D. Greenberg. I already provided an excerpt from this book here, where in the introduction the author is amusingly cynical on these "different languages" he didn't even know he spoke. The same overtone of ridiculing cynicism permeates the entire book, when he discusses the nationalist attempts of the 199s of forging "different languages", after they have been for 150 years doing exactly the opposite thing! (Take a look at the chapter names, for example). It is a highly recommended reading for anyone really interested in the history of SC language issues.

  I could list a number of major contemporary linguists (Slavist, Balto-Slavists) that still using the term Serbo-Croatian without a prejudice: Frederik Kortlandt (e.g. in the paper From Serbo-Croatian to Indo-European) Vladimir Dybo (e.g. in the important paper Balto-Slavic accentology and Winter's Law), Jay Jasanoff, a major Indo-Europeanist (the bestests IMHO! e.g. in his recent paper The accentual type *vèdō, *vedetı̍ and the origin of mobility in the Balto-Slavic verb), the great American Slavist Edward Stankiewicz (c.f. e.g. in his collection of papers The Slavic languages - Unity in Diversity), Henning Andersen (e.g. in his book Reconstructing prehistorical dialects - Initial vowels in Slavic and Baltic) etc. This list could be arbitrarily extended, esp. if we could include non-English papers and Slavists.

  The mentioned Morton-Benson dictionary is still the only comprehensive and professional SC dictionary in English, and it treats B/C/S as one language, in newer reprints/editions also preserving the same name of Serbo-Croatian. This should be the most important argument of them all, as this project is on writing a dictionary, and nothing else. It makes no sense to write a dictionary of standard Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian (and/or Montengerin and/or Serbo-Croatian) simultaneously. Yeah, we could do it, as we have no space constraints as paper dictionaries do, but who on earth would want to spend time writing or worse - using such a dictionary? The approach taken by Morton-Benson dictionary, as well as all the other comparative (etymological) dictionaries is doubtless the only logically sane thing to do.

  As for the opposing scholar's references - I know of no such in English language. You should try asking Robert Ullmann, Lmaltier and DCDURING, the vocal opposers of the merger, I'm sure they could dig up something academically authoritative ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 12:26, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  (Unindent) Look, it was surely a lot of work to write all this, but why don't you post an as-complete-as-possible bullet-formatted list of scholarly sources, without your commentary, without quotations, excluding all sources that are not available in English, excluding paragraphs and only including bullet points, without such commenting words as "eminent", "great", and similar stuff, modeled on the list that I have posted? If you do not want to do this, why bothering responding to my requests? It is your full right to refuse to respond to my requests. But please, I do not want any more exposition or comments on how various scholars are great, venerable, eminent, and so on, just plain, uncommented factual identification of the cited sources, as found in "References" sections in Wikipedia. --Dan Polansky 13:47, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  Do you think that such list would matter to anyone who voted against this proposal? I sure think it wouldn't. None of the 3 most vocal opponents of the proposal (Robert Ullmann, Lmaltier and DCDURING) has any kind of proficiency in any Slavic language, and such listings would be completely worthless to them. It's imperative that they be put in context, and the importance of their writers be emphasized.

  (Unindent) If you thought that the list did not matter, you did not need to respond; you could have left my vote without comment. The list that I am requesting should be one of the bases for the decision that the voters make in the first place. A Wikipedia article requires verification using references to external scholarly sources. Statements that make up the basis of a major decision concerning many Wiktionary entries should be also well cited. I have noticed that you are passing yourself as an authority, but for me, who am a wiki editor and follow certain wiki principles, you are not a citable source and thus none of your statements has any scholarly weight, unlike scholarly sources. You do not need to provide the list. To have the list was my original request; I still do not have the list. You do not need to respond to my requests; they may be seen as overly formal and academic. But my request was for a list of scholarly sources, such one as I have posted, not a commentary or exposition. --Dan Polansky 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  Also, I can assure you when I say the "great" or "eminent" it really is so. And the relevant citations from the works are crucial as basically no one will bother to look them up by himself. The abovequoted paragraph from Magner's grammar speaks a lot. --Ivan Štambuk 14:00, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  No, you should have only linked to the sources so that I can see directly for myself what the source says. That was the idea, practiced in Wikipedia. Obviously, Wikipedians do bother to follow a link to Google books, when provided, to read a paragraph or two. I did follow the links that you have provided to Google books, and have seen for myself that the sources indeed use the term "Serbo-Croatian", and could read for myself what the sources say on the subject. Again, the model is the section "References" in Wikipedia, which AFAICT works really well. --Dan Polansky 14:23, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  OK, but IMHO the practical-exposition approach I used is more suited to Wiktionary audience (I mean the regulars who might vote on this). Now with the mess started with this vote, I think that it's imperative to provide a layman account of the facts, with comments, excerpts and links to WP articles on the authors of the works mentioned. --Ivan Štambuk 14:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  (Unindent) You don't need to. Provide or not provide; that is your choice. My request is very clear. --Dan Polansky 14:37, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  This is a wiki Dan Polansky. Ivan has listed many sources for you (us) to view, with what he thinks is helpful (his comments). If you really feel the debate would be improved by a simple WP-reference style listing, please go ahead, BE BOLD, and create it yourself, filtering out whatever you think is unverifiable opinion. Otherwise, I think we're all savvy enough to take the links provided and take his commentary with however much "salt" we feel is necessary. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 02:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

  • Re 2 scripts: standard Serbian today uses both script (tho the hard-core Serb nationalist prefer Cyrillic as it being one of the pillars of Orthodoxy, but younger population predominantly uses Latin script, esp. on the Internet), and there is 1:1 mapping between them (except in some irrelevant corner cases). Per the proposed policy, entries in both script should be mirrors of one another, so if you don't want to learn Cyrillic spellings you simply ignore their respective entries. Up until the 1991 kids in Yugoslav school had to learn both scripts. Today unfortunately lots of Croatian young cannot read Cyrillic, even though historically Croatian writers have used Cyrillic script for centuries (in a variety called Western Cyrillic, or bosančica). Anyhow, I don't see how usage of both of scripts poses any kind of problem for this "unification", as it already elegantly solved by the proposal. Compare e.g. (deprecated template usage) bȋljka : (deprecated template usage) би̑љка. --Ivan Štambuk 09:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

    An off topic remark: Ivan, I can't read your signature, for whatever technical reasons. I only see boxes with unicode characters 2C09, 2C02, 2C00, 2C10 and more. This happens for both Times New Roman and for Verdana; Verdana is my default font. Just that you know. --Dan Polansky 12:10, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

    You need to install Glagolitic fonts, e.g. Dilyana [25] [26]. --ⰉⰂⰀⰐ ⰞⰕⰀⰏⰁⰖⰍ 13:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

  I have Vista and I can't see the characters either without additional installation. These fonts are not part of Arial Unicode MS. Perhaps you should change your signature. Anatoli 13:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

  At least so that part of the signature is readable on a typical unmodified system. Newbies should know who they're talking to. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 01:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  Yeah I've changed it so that the name is in Latin script, and the parenthesized link to the talkpage in Glagolitic. --Ivan (ⰃⰎⰀⰃⰑⰎⰅⰞⰉ)) 07:39, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  Your signature is largely your choice. I for one prefer plain signatures, ideally exactly matching the user name. When visiting the user page, I see the full user name anyway, so the term consisting of the full user name is stored in my mind as one referring to the user. If the user has a signature departing from the user name, I have to keep two terms in my head to refer to the user. If the user name consists of two parts, such as "Ivan Štambuk", I know the term of address is "Ivan". So I liked your previous signature; your user name is perfect from my point of view. Anyway. --Dan Polansky 08:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  The part in Glagolitic shows up as squares in Opera and IE, without the {{Glag}} template enforced. --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  Blah...I removed Glagolitic letters from my sig. Who'd expect to have browsers acting font-wise intelligently in the year 2009, or the newest version of the most popular OS having full support for Unicode from y. 2005.. --Ivan Štambuk 15:09, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

  Thanks. I really appreciate your switching back. --Dan Polansky 07:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  there is 1:1 mapping between them (except in some irrelevant corner cases). Ivan, not that this is a show stopper but proper foreign names are often significantly different in Cyrillic and Latin based spelling. Cyrillic based spelling usually prefers transliteration - Каракас, Џексон and Latin based usually preserves the original spelling: Caracas, Jackson (not Karakas, Džekson 1:1 mapping of Каракас, Џексон), which may or may not cause the difference in pronunciation. I know this argument is used by opponents of the unified Serbo-Croatian language, I don't know if this was mentioned before in this discussion. Of course, the geographical names could have variant entries but this is where the mapping is not 1:1. Not sure if these are some of the corner cases you were referring to. Anatoli 13:08, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

  Actually I was referring to the scripts (Cyrillic and Latin), between which there is 1:1 mapping, excepting some corner cases where Latin <lj> (e.g. in metiljantarni), <nj> (e.g. in injekcija) and <dž> (e.g. in nadživjeti) are not affricated. In such words these sequences do not represent [ʎ], [ɲ] or [dʒ] but [lj], [nj] or [d.ʒ] (not sure if this last one is the proper IPA transcription - they are supposed to be pronounced unaffricated in different syllables..). In Cyrllic script these are represented by one symbols when affricated, 2 when they are not, but in Latin they are in both cases written the same so you must know whether it's an exception from otherwise phonological orthography or not. But cases such as these are very rare, and a number of words exhibiting this is limited, and these words are mostly very predictable (usually occurring on morpheme boundary).

  As for the place names - Serbian prefers phonetic transcription of a foreign name. So you get e.g. Los Andželes in Serbian orthography where in Croatian it's just Los Angeles. This is not a matter of script - Serbian is written in both scripts so you can also write it in Cyrillic spelling as Лос Анџелес! Furthermore, when forming relative adjectives (in -ski, -čki of -ni) from such foreign names, Croatian also phoneticizes it, so it would be losandželeski "of or pertaning to los Angeles" in both Croatian, and Serbian orthographies (and Bosnian, of course). Or лосанџелески in Cyrillic spelling.

  I haven't mention the formatting of foreign names in the proposal simply because I haven't thought of it in the first place. And it's not a big deal anyway: variant forms could be trivially treated inside the ===Alternative forms=== header, as other variant forms (jat reflexes, word final -l, prefixed /x/..) It's just a matter of spelling norm - the words are pronounced identically. Also, the phoneticazion of foreign names is not such a trivial thing, and Serbian Wikipedia, namely the forum on Orthographical Issues on it, often discusses how to properly phoneticize foreign names. As I said, Croatian orthography has the same issue when using them as relative adjectives - but that problem is often completely evaded as younger generations tend to use German and English-style noun qualifiers instead of proper adjectives (e.g. saying Internet protokol instead of internetski protkol), which is kind of "improper" and drives prescriptivists crazy. --Ivan Štambuk 13:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

  Also, I haven't really noticed that some of the opponents of the unification has mentioned this as an argument.. None of them knows SC so they're likely completely unaware of this. --Ivan Štambuk 13:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Abstain Angr 13:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC) On the one hand, Ivan is quite right that it's utterly unscientific to pretend "Croatian", "Serbian", "Bosnian", and "Montenegrin" are four different languages rather than four local varieties of the same language. It is regrettable that the powers that be in the relevant countries are unable to see that just because your language carries someone else's name, that doesn't mean anyone is going to confuse you with a member of that other nationality (just ask a German-speaking Austrian or Swiss if he's German, or a French-speaking Swiss or Belgian if he's French, or an English-speaking American or Australian if he's English!). On the other hand, the facts on the ground - however absurd they may be - are that Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are treated as three different languages by all relevant authorities (the ISO, the UN, the EU, the WMF, etc. etc.), thanks to the puerile nationalistic attitudes in those countries. So until the language regulators and code-assigners grow up and start putting reason ahead of emotion, we're stuck with what we've got. Angr 13:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

   Of relevant international instutions, ICTY has been treating it as the same language (they call it "BCS"), and I have no doubts that one day that when these countries enter the EU that those bureaucrats in Bruxelles would do exactly the same thing, when they calculate how much money should be wasted to "translations" to 4 standard languages that are less different than British and American English. ISO merely reflects national standards and nothing else (but they kept Serbo-Croatian as a "macrolanguage" hbs), and as for the UN I am not familiar on how voluminous their production is to be taken as relevant: If they engaged in the same type of scenario as ICTY where they'd have to pay translators out of their own pocket to translate tens of thousands of documents, or provide the real-time interpretation of speech, I'm pretty sure they'd put it too in some type of generic "BCS" container. "Invisible hand".. :)--Ivan Štambuk 14:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

   Angr, while it's true that many authorities separate this language, most of them do it for political reasons. When it comes to practice, like Ivan pointed out, they deal with it as one language. In ICTY they keep only one translation going. Most universities around the world (in fact, all I ever bothered to check) teach only one language, and I don't think there is a humantities/languages department in the world that offers courses in, say, both Serbian and Croatian. It comes down to this: translators use the same dictionaries, no matter what they call their source/target language. --Dcabrilo 16:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

That's right, that's the whole point of this vote/discussion: let me highlight it: translators use the same dictionaries, no matter what they call their source/target language. Anatoli 00:25, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

No, actually we don't. Whether the client wants (e.g.) Croatian or Serbian is critical, and a reference that pretends that they are the same is less-than-useful. (albeit not completely useless ;-) And for translating Serbian to Croatian? The Serbian(native) and Croatian(native) language reference dictionaries are what the translator (a native speaker of Croatian) will use when needed. (In the wikts, that would mean the hr.wikt and the sr.wikt.) Robert Ullmann 06:47, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes we do. There is not a single English-language dictionary in the world that simultaneously has Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian treated separately. You cannot learn "Croatian" and not "Bosnian" because linguistically they're the same language, 100% mutually intelligible, with 99% identical grammar, standardized on the identical dialect (Neoštokavian). Translating Serbian to Croatian? LoL - that would amount to "translating" British English to American English. You can do it - but it's a waste of time. When money comes into play on a large-scale projects, like on ICTY when they need to handle tens of thousands of pages of documentation and provide interpreters for Bosniak, Croat and Serb speakers, they always treat it as one language (as "BCS" in case of ICTY). Dčabrilo already illustrated to you above how the srpskohrvatski rečnik "evolved" to srpski rečnik by - a name change. Professional translators use the most professional dictionary which in this case is Morton-Benson English-SC-English dictionary, which treats them all - (you can guess) - collectively. --Ivan Štambuk 11:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm tired of repeating all this for the billionth time :( --Ivan Štambuk 11:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

PS Robert your canvassing of opposing votes won't change anything, it only shows how desperate you really are, trying to obstruct this proposal by any means at your disposal. --Ivan Štambuk 11:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

"And for translating Serbian to Croatian?" It's unfortunate that I've seen enough of you to know that you're actually serious. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 16:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

(I probably shouldn't reply, as it will inevitably provoke yet more abuse, but for everyone else) Requests from clients for translations between UK/Commonwealth English are common. Note that the usual product of a translation service is a finished text, ready for publication, in the precise language required. (there are also quick rough translations for researchers etc, that isn't what I am talking about here) The result should (must) be as written by a native speaker. In the case of (say) US-UK, the translator will remove or modify idioms, particular forms, word choice, spelling (honor to honour, but "National Honor Society" stays the same). In the case of Serbian to Croatian, the most obvious thing is converting (if needed) Cyrillic to Latin, and looking for the few irregular cases (and things to be left, with Latin script gloss), vocabulary differences, syntax, replacing Ekavian variants used in Serbian, so on, etc, copy-editing. The desired end product is native speaker fluent Croatian. Similarly in the other direction. Not silly at all. Robert Ullmann 09:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Please, Robert, stop self-victimizing yourself finally. In the last several days every single one of your comment started with "here comes more abuse, poor me". If anyone is being used, that's in fact me. Can we simply argument on each other's points and cut the drama altogether? :-)

Requests from clients for translations between UK/Commonwealth English are common - Good! Should we then split English too? ==American English==, ==Brittish English==, ==Indian English== ? :) The point is not whether the "translation" or redaction for publishing sr->hr is possible (in fact, often e.g. Croatian magazines when publishing texts of Serbian authors do it, changing Ekavian to Ijekavian and using prevalent Croatian synonyms for words which are perceived as prevalently Serbian.. - but not that often since the fall of the right-wing government in 2001), but whether it makes sense. I presume in some legal contexts it does, where every word or phrase has a precise legally-bound meaning, and the possible ambiguity or the absence of absolute precision could prove to be quite costly to client's pocket. In 99% of everyday scenarios - it's not. There are Serbian and Bosnian TV shows broadcasted on Croatian (including national's) TV channels and these are absolutely never showed with subtitles. Same is valid for Croatian movie in Bosnian/Serbian cinemas and vice versa. This is even more valid for common shows such as Operacija trijumf where language proves to be no barrier at all. Croatian TV presenters work on Serbian TV stations, Croatian journalists write for Serbian newspapers..and they don't change their language at all (perhaps only a bit, but only under the influence of the surroundings, i.e. they do not "Serbify" it consciously.) The speeches of Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo are 100% mutually intelligible, with less regional coloring in slang than any big American metropolis internally. English is due to its vast geographical distribution (UK, America and Australia aren't really next to each other) much more susceptible to internal diversification than SC varieties, where in fact convergence is ongoing due to close proximity and lots of media exchange. Unlike English, Serbo-Croatian has very solid phonological system that basically hasn't changed at all in the last few hundred years. Just a few minutes ago I've read how the broadcast of Croatian hardline nationalist performer on the Croatian national television caused a stir of disapproval all over Serbia [27]. How can that be? :) The answer is very simple - Croatian TV channels are by cable television watched by million of Serbs in Serbia and B&H. As I said - convergence caused by modern-day media, that nullifies all the artificially put "obstacles". --Ivan Štambuk 10:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Robert, for what's it worth: reasonable clients don't really hire translators who rely on dictionaries to provide "feel" of the local dialect. Like I said before: almost none of the vocabulary/grammar native to a country is totally alien in others. If I were hired to translate poetry to language that reflects localisms of Novi Sad (which is about half an hour drive from the city I was born in and where I lived my whole life), I would probably say "no". But when I translate manuals, articles, movies or even novels, and I'm given target dialect of Croatian, I can do with with some regex magic. I'm not kidding - I had gigs like that before. It is SUFFICIENT to have localisms pointed out in Wiktionary to be able to produce a translation respectful of a dialect. BTW. I dare you to translate ANYTHING to Chakavian or Torlak using any Serbian/Croatian dictionary out there - Wiktionary is the first place that has a chance to cover all these entries, but we will never manage to do it if we are constrained by politics (e.g. Torlak is _officially_ not a dialect, though I can name several major works written in it). --Dcabrilo 20:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I've already added some Čakavianisms: Category:Chakavian Serbo-Croatian ;) Most Chakavian speeches will unfortunately soon die out (be Štokavianized under the influence of literary idiom used by the media and taught in schools). I'll add also lots of Kajkavianisms once they publish Rječnik hrvatskoga kajkavskoga književnog jezika on the Internet. It should be noted that all of those dialects are strictly subliterary nowadays (but they've been full-blown literary languages in the past, up until ~150 years ago) - their only publicly literate usage is in in some isolated localpatriotic publications, folk music festivals or poetry meetings, and a few Internet web pages. Native Chakavian and Kajkavian speakers all speak standard language when they come to urban centers. Former major Chakavian urban centers such as the cities of Rijeka and Split have all been Štokavianised in the last 70 years. Subliterary (non-Neoštokavian) dialect don't have bright future at all, and next to nothing has been done to preserve them, and Wiktionary could become the first place to provide the full dialectal picture of all the words of the so-called "Central South Slavic diasystem" (=Čakavian+Kajkavian+Štokavian+Torlakian). --Ivan Štambuk 23:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

As a personally emotionally uninvolved user I want to make some comments. I think, we should be careful to realize the fact, that "nationalism" is not exclusive to the "Serbo-Croatian" party nor the "Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin" party. _Both_ are partially based on nationalist ideas. The "Serbo-Croatian" party wants to emphasize a united South Slavic nation, the "Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin" party is more happy with smaller identity areas. They only disagree in the size of the area their nationalism applies on.

It's a matter of fact, that many words are the same in all of the languages. It's meaningful to reduce redundancy by collecting the information in a single entry, if separate entries would be completely identical. On the other side many words are not the same and it would be unwise to put them in a single entry.

So the best compromise solution to me is: Keep the different categories/templates etc., keep the different L2 headers in case the words differ, but in cases where the words are the same use a common L2 header. But instead of "Serbo-Croatian" it should say "Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian" (or whatever subset of those four variants applies in the specific case. That's the most neutral form, cause a) other than "Serbo-Croatian" it doesn't suggest that it is "only one" language and b) it doesn't omit Bosnian and Montenegrin. So if Croatian uses word X and Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin use word Y, the entry on X would have a "Croatian" header and Y would have a "Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin" header. --Slomox 17:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Just a few notes:

1. There is no "Serbo-Croatian party" and we don't want to emphasize South Slavic unity or whatever. I've been contributing to Wiktionary for ~2 years and have created some 6-7 000 separate (mostly ==Croatian==) entries, and have eventually realized how pointless that kind of one-sided enterprise is. This initiative is chiefly to reduce more of such utter time-waste in the future. We simply want to treat what is by every single Western Slavist out there linguistically doubtless one language (as several voters have noted, there are much more differences in regional English) as one language, for the numerous benefits for both the users and the contributors, as abundantly outlined in the merger rationale and elsewhere. There is no "agenda", I assure you (neither "Greater Serbian" nor "Yugoslavian") - don't just plainly trust whatever they've told you :)
2. Some 99% of words would be shared. We write "all world in all languages", and for 99% of what is today perceived as "Serbianism" in "proper standard Croatian" by Croatian linguo-fascist in fact has centuries of attestations by Croatian writers, which I as someone quite knowledgeable on the topic can trivially corroborate for almost any word of your choice. So the overlap would be > 99%, esp. if you would take dialectal material such as Ekavian (Kajkavian and Northern Čakavian) jat reflexes of Croatian, which I've already contributed quite a few. There is simply no alternative but to treat the common core as one language and abstract the trivial orthographical and phonological differences between the standards away by utilizing context labels and ELE-proscribed headers such as ===Alternative forms===
3. I'd have no problems accepting terms such as "BCS(M)" (used by e.g. ICTY and some modern SC handbooks) or even more needlessly cumbersome ==Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian== as you propose, but there's simply no reason not to stick to the term that is used in 99% of English literature, and still is used by all the Western Slavists. SIL/ISO still uses it as a macrolanguage identifier [28] so it can hardly be argued to be "demonized" in English-speaking literature as it is in the native ones (esp. Croatian, but in the translation of course). --Ivan Štambuk 17:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

But there's simply no reason not to stick to the term that is used in 99% of English literature That's no completely true. It would be more correct to say, that there's no reason you are accepting. It's a fact that there was tension between the main groups in former Yugoslavia. These groups have closely related language variants. These language variants could be compared to a multiple star system. Each star is separate when looked at from a point near to the system, but they are gravitationally bound and form only one star when looked at from a point farer away.

As said before, there was tension between the groups of former Yugoslavia and they have chosen to look upon their language variants as four different languages. This is official policy in all four countries. Language and ethnicity is very much about identity and in the Southern Slavic area ethnicity has proven to be more important for the identity than language. They have decided to break up the language along ethnic borders and to maintain four closely related but different languages. They _do not_ want to share a common identity with the other groups. And outsiders have to respect this decision. Just like calling a Catalan a Spaniard against his will is disrespectful, or calling an Inuit an Eskimo against his will is disrespectful or like calling an African-American a negro or even worse against his will is disrespectful. If a religious/ethnic/linguistic etc. group says "Please call us X, but don't call us Y" it is a matter of respect to call them X and not Y. If the Montenegrins say "please refer to our language as Montenegrin and not as Serbo-Croatian for we are no Croats and no Serbs" this should be accepted. --Slomox 20:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

~as w/flemish- imnotdutch,sigh[c my babel]--史凡 - Please also use MSN/skype: sven0921 as I suffer RSI and so cannot type very well! 16:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

a united South Slavic nation - Slomox, there was never any intention for such concoction, since the Bulgarian and Slovenian (the remaining two South Slavic languages) are pretty dissimilar from Serbo-Croatian (esp. Bulgarian: no cases, an additional mode and so on), have centuries-old literary heritage. which is impossible to incorporate in the Serbo-Croatian one. Therefore it is futile to treat the notion of Serbo-Croatian as a tool of Panslavism, because it is not. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

It would be more correct to say, that there's no reason you are accepting. - Sorry but I cannot comprehend what you are trying to say. Can you please rephrase this statement? What I was saying is that the term Serbo-Croatian is completely benign in English language, as that can abundantly corroborated by citing both the relevant scholarly publications (as I have done above to Polansky et al.), and the international authorities such as SIL/ISO which still utilize the term Serbo-Croatian for what they call "macrolanguage" (a term not used in general linguistics).

Standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian all based on identical dialect - Neoštokavian. They have identical phonology (same phonemic inventory, same allophony), the same accentuation system (2-way pitch accent), have 100% identical inflection (think about it - literally thousands of inflectional and derivational morphemes!) and overall have 99% identical grammar. The only real differences are in lexis, and most of them are non-lexical (i.e. they do not induce a shift in meaning, and present an intelligiblity barrier comparable to e.g. rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciation of English). Such a sitation when there are 3 (soon even 4!) Ausbau languages that are standardized on the same dialect is unprecedented anywhere in the world, so drawing any kind of comparisons would be misleading.

Please don't generalize conclusions to entire nations. It is perfectly normal and acceptable to have the consitution of Croatia stating "Croatian language" as official, of Montenegro "Montengrin language" etc. - in practice exactly nothing has changed before the change, when each of those states had respectively "Serbo-Croatian", "Serbian" etc. as the official language. People still speak the same way, write the same way. All the attempt to "purify" Croatian language during the Tuđman's dictatorship in the 1990s was ridiculed by the common people, and newly-coined words such as dalekovidnica and zrakomlat are today used exclusively as terms of mockery. "Language break-up" as you call it was not by the people but by the government and linguists who supported such purely formal acts - for the rest of the world, exactly nothing has changed. There is no university in the world which teaches separate courses on Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, and has separate departments of them. For Russian, German, Dutch, American etc. Slavists exactly nothing has changed. Some of them out of courtesy use the term "Croatian language" when attending conferences in Croatia (so that the hosts wouldn't be "offended"), but elsewhere they simply stick to Serbo-Croatian, as it's pointless assign one ethnic designation to the word that is spoken the same way by at least 4 other ethnicities/nations. This statement is very dangerous: They _do not_ want to share a common identity with the other groups. And outsiders have to respect this decision. - perhaps for some this is true, but how come that all of the native Serbo-Croatian speakers that have voted here (4 of them so far, of all 3 nations, as I can count), and long-time contributors of SC on this projects, are supportive of this proposal? ^_^ The term Serbo-Croatian is not demonised in English language, and that's what matters. We shouldn't care for the mental health of Balkanic nationalist bigots. We're here simply to write a free dictionary of all words in all languages and should only be concerned with points that would facilitate such lofty enterprise, and absolutely nothing else. People like Pepsi Lite? We'd do better without them. --Ivan Štambuk 21:15, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

What I am basically saying is that this type of collaborative cross-cultural wikiproject will be eo ipso repulsive for hardline nationalist bigots, especially for those that would like to think that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are 3 completely different languages that just happen to have 99% identical grammar by pure chance. 5 Years of existence of this project pretty much proves this - only the folks that were completely agnostic (or came to "see the light" eventually like myself) to such heavy nationalism-induced prejudice remained and thoroughly contributed to this project. To this moment, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the acceptance of the proposal as a community-binding policy would "scare away" some users that would've otherwise turned out to be great and productive contributors. I find it overall rather sad, if not ironic, that several advocates of the alleged multiethnic perspectives that are being PoVized by the proposal still haven't managed to realize a simple fact: All the actual Serbo-Croatian contributors and native speakers that voted actually agree; we don't "hate" each other, don't find the notion of a common language "insultive" of "disrespectful", don't want to burn each other houses.. :) It is always that complete strangers are somehow more bothered with the "problems" of co-existential (co-collaborative, in this case) harmony that aren't really there.. :-) Think about it, do you really think that you could get one day a proud Croat contributing ==Croatian==, proud Bosniak contributing ==Bosnian== and proud Serb contributing ==Serbian==, with overall of >95% redundancy among the entries, all contributing simultaneously on this project, and without stepping on each others toes? :) Not gonna happen, trust me.. --Ivan Štambuk 21:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

do you really think that you could get one day a proud Croat contributing ==Croatian==, proud Bosniak contributing ==Bosnian== and proud Serb contributing ==Serbian==, with overall of >95% redundancy among the entries? If that question is directed at me, then you haven't carefully read what I wrote above. I agree to have only one entry, if the word is the same. I only want to have different entries, if the words are clearly different. And my main concern is the heading. My argument is: The term "Serbo-Croatian" can be offensive to everybody who refuses to be called "Croat", "Serb" or "Serbo-Croat". But "Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian" should be rather unoffensive, if it's true - like you say - that there's nobody with a pan-agenda. --Slomox 08:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is no "agenda" (neither pan-Yugoslav nor par-Serbian), and it would be good if people stopped making such unargumented accusations. As for the heading: We cannot it is an option in theory: we could make it special case and use e.g. some template like {{-sh-}} that could display either ==Serbo-Croatian==, or ==BCS== or whatever, on the basis of a user preference (note that we could do this later, using a bot to replace ==Serbo-Croatian== with an alternative display). But the thing is that everything other than Serbo-Croatian has generally very little English usage, and Serbo-Croatian is by far the most common English term, still used by the professionals, SIL/ISO, dictionaries... --Ivan Štambuk 10:09, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

ithinkthat'l change,ivan;)--史凡 - Please also use MSN/skype: sven0921 as I suffer RSI and so cannot type very well! 16:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

What about ==Serbo-Croatian (B.C.M.S.)== with a blue link (as it is now when you use "sh" code? With B.C.M.S. or something similar in brackets? That forum I referred to before has finally adopted some rule to add BCS prefix (without Montenegrin) to all translations or grammar requests. The realisation that this is one language is happening in other places as well. I know it's a bit longer but may serve people with different opinions on this. Anatoli 02:18, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

That would look OK. We could even make it inside some special template that would display a section name you could customize via CSS, defaulting to something that we agree is the most "neutral". Name of the language section is by far the least important issue, and we can always fix it easily later in a few hours of a bot run just doing simple search/replace function. The most important thing at this moment is that the proposal gets accepted in its current form, and we can always refine the details later. So far, as far as I can tell only two of the voters have expressed their disagreement with the name Serbo-Croatian, but as I said, it really bears absolutely no negative connotation in general use in English language (as opposed to the native variant srpskohrvatski which could to some of the speakers), and is used in top-dictionaries, grammars..and no less then by SIL/ISO itself for their "macrolanguage" classification. So it's kind of silly IMHO to claim that the name is "wrong", but if some insist, it should pose no problem.

As for the realization: people are simply being practical. They could have opened 3 subforums for B/C/S separately, but then they would most probably be getting requests posted to all 3 subforums, and the native speakers visiting, replying and discussing on all 3 subforums.. Also, I'd like to emphasize that the question whether B/C/S are "one language" or not is not that important with respect to this merger - the question we should be asking is what is gained/lost by treating them as one language, with respect to the contributors and the end-users. That should be the only and the utmost concern. --Ivan Štambuk 02:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I know, I know, officially these are now different languages but no matter what you call it ("naš jezik" or whatever) in most cases you get the same answer or very similar, depending who answers the question. Anatoli 04:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Abstain because the classification is ambiguous. Differences between en.us and en.uk are smaller than differences between Serbian Ekavian and Croatian (Iyekavian), while they (differences between en.us and en.uk) are comparable with differences between Serbian Iyekavian and Bosnian (Iyekavian) and somewhat smaller than differences between Iyekavian standards (Serbian Iyekavian and Bosnian at one side and Croatian at the other side). So, those standard languages should be treated as a part of a larger linguistic group, but I would like to see rules for grouping languages, first. At the other side, the name is not appropriate and Neoshtokavian should be used instead. Also, linguistically speaking, it doesn't include three other language systems from the area: Chakavian, Kaykavian and Torlakian, which should be treated as separate of Neoshtokavian standard languages. --Millosh 12:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

   Really Millosh, and what should we do with Old Štokavian speeches, treat their words as if belonging to "different language"? Absurd. The term Neoštokavian is virtually unknown outside the dialectology studies, and is too obscure for a general-purpose dictionary. In just about every publication I saw which had the comparative dialectological material, they used "Serbo-Croatian" (or sometimes "BCS" or "S&CR") to denote Neoštokavian, and other dialects as Čak. or Kaj.. We are currently discussing the alternative name like BCS(M) to be used as a header name. Once we work out the technical details (our structure is much more complicated than Wikipedia's) the Serbo-Croatian name will be gone by default (it would be a user-definable preference). Čakavian, Kajkavian and Torlakian are dead as literary dialects for a long, long time (and they'll basically be extinct by the end of this century); they are added only sporadically and marked with context labels. They have no official orthography, grammar, and dictionaries, and are composed of vastly differing speeches that would be insane to treat commonly (e.g. the Northern and Southern Čakavian speeches are 100 more different than standard SC varieties, in accentuation, phonology, inflection..almost different languages themselves). Our primary focus is the literary idiom which you must agree merits common treatment. --Ivan Štambuk 19:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

   To be honest, I really don't care what is better known and what is not. There is a space for scientifically valid classification. --Millosh 10:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   The real question here is what is the intention with this proposal: (1) to treat structurally very similar standard languages linguistically as one or (2) to build a political platform? --Millosh 10:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards are very similar, while distinctive dialects spoken by Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins are not very similar: there are strong differences in accent systems (from five accents systems to one accent system), inflection (from highly synthetic to highly analytic systems), as well as significant differences in phonological and morphological systems. --Millosh 10:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   While treating a group of standards as based on the same language system is reasonable, treating all language systems as the same may be just politically motivated, very comparable with political motivation of treating very similar language systems as separate [national] languages. --Millosh 10:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   So, while one part of this proposal is valid for me, another is not. --Millosh 10:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   Quoting from WT:ASH#Introduction: "The term Serbo-Croatian on Wiktionary acts as a generic container to all 4 national varieties. " - it's only on formatting the codified, standard idioms at one level-2 header. All the 3 standard languages are based on the same dialect, have the same phonology, accentual system, 99% of inflection... Differences when occurring are always marked with context labels in the definition/translation lines, and in the templates (e.g. different spellings for Future I inside the {{sh-conj}}). It is exclusively a matter of formatting convenience, and not "political platform" or sth...(contrary to sb's imagination).

   As for the dialects: I'm quite aware how divergent they are, but as I said, they are sub-literary, have a very low production nowadays, and we are chiefly focused on the standard idiom (when you say Serbo-Croatian or BCS nowadays, you primarily mean "Neoštokavian"). These non-literary dialects mutually differ so much that we might as well grant them separate headers. For examples, we already have separate headers on Arabic dialects, and on Lithuanian Aukštaitian (the standard dialect, under ==Lithuanian==) and Žemaitian (spoken in the villages, greatly differing in inflection and accentuation, formatted as ==Samogitian==). But currently there is no need to discuss such solutions for Čakavian, Kajkavian and Torlakian extensively, as we have very few entries in them (I added basically all of them, with citations from Croatian Wikisource). They're mostly added for illustrative purposes (e.g. the Ikavian reflex of jat), or because they've retained some etymologically interesting word. Once again, this proposal is primarily focused on standard languages, the ones taught in schools, promoted by the media...the ones all the foreigners learn. We can always work out the details for dialects later..

   As for the scientific classification: this is a general purpose dictionary, and the most common terms have preference, not the most "proper" ones (similar rule is valid also on Wikipedia) --Ivan Štambuk 10:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   So, Chakavian and Torlakian would be under "Serbo-Croatian" as a national/political/linguistic category, like the case with Samagotian/Lithuanian is? Please, specify. --Millosh 11:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   Well known (and scientifically invalid) name is not an excuse for using a term which ~70% of native population treat as an insult. --Millosh 11:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   Tthe 2 Lithuanian dialects are formatted at 2 completely different language headers. Thus we have both Category:Lithuanian language and Category:Samogitian language. We might try the same thing with Čakavian and Torlakian, but the thing is that for e.g. Čakavian, there is no "unique" Čakavian literary language, and that Northern and Southern Čakavian speeches are extremely different. I don't know for Torlakian, but for Čakavian and Kajkavian there was never any kind of established literary "koine", only local idioms used in various works throughout the ages. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to provide the inflection templates that would encompass all the Čakavian or Kajkavian speeches. The best approach would be, for the time being, to treat them simply as dialectal SC, marked with context labels (Kajkavian), (Čakavian) and (Torlakian).

   We're currently discussing the problems with the move to ==BCS== header name, the Serbo-Croatian unfortunately proved to be a complete fiasco.. (as you can very-well see). Your figure of 70% is highly exaggerated BTW, and we focus on English-language audience of which 99% is completely politically agnostic as to whether Serbo-Croatian or BCS. The first name is actually much more descriptive and intuitive... It is also the name still used by most of the professional Slavists, and also by SIL/ISO as a "macrolanguage" designator, so it can hardly be said to be politically compromised in the English language (as opposed to the B/C/S itself). --Ivan Štambuk 11:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   English-language audience preferred nigger, too. Besides that, a lot of native speakers know to read English. --Millosh 12:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   BCS has less local support than Serbo-Croatian. In other words, nigger, again. --Millosh 12:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   There is no grouping of Torlakian, Chakavian, Sthokavian and Kaykavian under the name of Serbo-Croatian or BCS -- which is not politically motivated. (As well as grouping Torlakian and Shtokavian under the name Serbian or grouping Kaykavian, Chakavian and Shtokavian under the name Croatian -- are politically motivated.) --Millosh 12:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   SIL and ISO are under heavy influences of different interest groups (political, business), so they are not relevant. Besides that, just the working group for ISO 639-6 codes started to deal with linguistic, instead with political entities. --Millosh 12:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   There is no need to be cynical Millosh. We are focusing on the modern English usage, so comparisons with (deprecated template usage) nigger and others, in modern English politically incorrect terms, is pointless.

   The term BCS is used by lots of modern-day university-level handbooks in English. Either as "B/C/S" or "BCS" or "B&C&S" or whatever. Slavists OTOH still prefer "Serbo-Croatian". It's a matter of choosing: professionality or the masses. However, in the end I think that we'll prob. agree on the header name ==Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian== as the most neutral.

   Čakavian, Štokavian and Kajakvian speeches suffered a great influence of each other (esp. during the migrational period), converged for centuries and share hundreds of isoglosses. Basically all the dialectology books agree that what is needed is a term to explain that area in terms of their mutual influence. Today most of the Čakavian and Kajkavian (dunno about Torlakian) speeches are heavily Štokavianized. Whether you call it "Serbo-Croatian" (as most foreign dialectologists still do) or "Central South Slavic diasystem" (that's what Croatian dialectologists use) is unimportant - the need for such term very much exists. It is scientifically not politically-motivated need. I cited Dutch (Balto-)Slavist Vermeer on the rationale talkpage on this already: I stick to the traditional label of 'Serbo-Croatian' because from the point of view of the diachronic linguist a technical term denoting the dialect continuum traditionally referred to by it is indispensable and would have to be invented if it did not already exist. This choice should not be construed as implying a political preference. Indeed, I am very unhappy with the traditional requirement (which has always been widespread in SCr. linguistics) that investigators of the history of the language should adapt their linguistic terminology to political priorities.

   I agree that SIL/ISO are under the influence of lots of politics (they even assign codes to imaginary languages!), but I hardly doubt that the creation of SC macrolanguage was one of those decisions. They had the old SC code sh, and when the new standard languages emerged in the 1990s they've obsoleted it and grouped them all under the SC macrolanguage. The point I was making with it, however, is of the politically-uncompromised usage of the term Serbo-Croatian in English language, as opposed to the native B/C/S usage, and nothing else. --Ivan Štambuk 12:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   German linguists still use "Indo-Germanic" as term which means "Indo-European". Probably, because of national romanticism which survived denazification of Germany. There are excuses for usage of that term, as well as there are excuses for usage of any invalid or insulting term. The fact is that the term "Serbo-Croatian language" is insulting for majority of the local population (personally, I don't care about names; they are just nice playground for mystifications) and that it shouldn't be used as-is. BCS is, again, introduced by ICTY, which, again, the majority of population doesn't like exactly because ICTY introduced it. (And about numbers: according to the programs of political parties in Serbia and Croatia and their strenght, approximation is that approximatelly 10% of voters in Serbia and 0.10% of voters in Croatia support the name "Serbo-Croatian". And it is reasonably to suppose that 20-30% more don't care about the name.) So, just do lexicography, do linguistics, but try to avoid terms which are treated by the most of population as insulting. --Millosh 13:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   As I said, this is English wikiproject and we should follow the most prevalent name in English language, which is, as it turns out, "Serbo-Croatian". Those voters figures are hardly representative - in Croatia 60%-70% of eligible voters doesn't vote at all (and it can firmly be assumed that they're as "insulted" by the term Serbo-Croatian as they're insulted by the mafia politics of their ruling parties). --Ivan Štambuk 13:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   I mentioned term "nigger" because it is comparable. As an obvious pejorative, it has been dropped by wider population. Term "Serbo-Croatian" is not a pejorative, but it insults identity of many humans if you try to impose to them that their language has to be named with that name. And I don't think that any of us want that. --Millosh 13:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   It's a valid concern, and as I said, we'll definitely migrate to sth else, we just need to agree on what exactly. ==Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian== seems the most appropriate to me; do you have any suggestions? --Ivan Štambuk 13:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   "Central South Slavic diasystem" is a good term and it incorporates all of the dialects and standard languages from the area. So, I generally support that name. Classification like the one below would be good enough: --Millosh 13:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   • Central South Slavic
     • Torlakian
     • Shtokavian
       • Ekavian
         • Serbian Ekavian standard langauge
         • Serbo-Croatian Ekavian standard language (formally extinct)
       • Iyekavian
         • Bosnian standard language
         • Croatian standard language
         • Montenegrin standard language
         • Serbian Iyekavian standard language
         • Serbo-Croatian Iyekavian standard language (formally extinct)
       • Ikavian
     • Chakavian
     • Kaykavian

   And if you want to make the list shorter, to add just standard languages, hierarchy should look like: --Millosh 13:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   • Central South Slavic
     • Shtokavian
       • Ekavian
         • Serbian Ekavian standard langauge
         • Serbo-Croatian Ekavian standard language (formally extinct)
       • Iyekavian
         • Bosnian standard language
         • Croatian standard language
         • Montenegrin standard language
         • Serbian Iyekavian standard language
         • Serbo-Croatian Iyekavian standard language (formally extinct)

   If you want to generalize, let's say, conjungation, then you should use something like {{neoshtokavian conjungation}}. --Millosh 13:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   So, there is a way for moving out of the political grounds. --Millosh 13:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   "CSSD" is obscure term indorsed only by Croatian dialectologists for political reasons. It has almost no usage at all in English language (try searching it on Google Books or Google Scholar). Using it as a L2 header name is out of the question. It is moreover almost completely disputed as a genetic division (see Matasović 2008). --Ivan Štambuk 13:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   So, dialog is impossible. Switching to oppose. --Millosh 13:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   You're proposing a completely obscure term as a replacement, with no English-language usage at all. Sorry for informing you that it's out of the question so "harshly"; I assure you that the community would tell you the exactly same thing if you proposed it on the discussion boards. You very-well know that it makes no sense at all to treat Kajkavian as if more closer to Štokavian rather than with Slovene, or Torlakian with Čakavian rather than with Bulgaro-Macedonian. I sympathize with your efforts to resolve this in an "unpolitical" way, using only strict linguistic designations, but that approach is not compatible with fundamental tenets of this project. Neither ==Neosthokavian== nor cumbersome ==Central South Slavic Diasystem== are an option, sorry. --Ivan Štambuk 13:54, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   Some purist screw up half of hour of my writing because page with 200k of discussions shouldn't have "discussion" header. Anyhow, I am off up to the time when something would be changed with this proposal. --Millosh 19:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   That "purist" is an administrator who has no problem banning people who want to make a mess of an already messy (and by this point) fubar vote. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 19:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

2. Abstain, in theory I like the argument, but deleting valid ISO 639 codes, I don't like it. Plus I don't think I can make an informed decision. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
3. Abstain. 1) I don't know the languages. 2) I would - in principle - be strongly supportive of any means to reduce duplication and increase the efficent use of editor's time, but 3) that's not worth being denoted "war criminal". (Yes, it's ridiculous to succumb to FUD, no, I won't change my opinion despite this. There's no point in arguing about that. And reason (1) still would stand.) \Mike 13:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

   >that's not worth being denoted "war criminal"

   It's worth, trust me (the conclusion reached after some 10k pointless edits). Anyhow, I'm not being called "genocidal Serbian war criminal" anymore, now I'm "Yugo-chauvinist anti-Croat" ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 13:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

4. Abstain — Carolina wren discussió 23:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

   Leaving aside the heated political arguments, this boils down in part to a dispute over whether to make things more convenient for editors or for users. Certainly for editors, a single Serbo-Croatian header would be more convenient. Were there no other factors, it would be worth doing for those reasons, but we also have user desires to consider and for me user convenience always trumps editor convenience. However, we have two separate sets of users, some who passionately favor a unitary header, some who passionately object. I don't feel like trying to decide which set of users to satisfy. If we had some sort of technical solution so that in the entry foo, foo#Serbo-Croatian, foo#Serbian, foo#Croatian, and foo#Bosnian all pointed to the same section and the appearance of the header could be user set, I could see making a preference for unitary entries policy. — Carolina wren discussió 23:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

   How is four identical headers convenient to users? The users who are strongly against the unification are morons or native speakers who refuse to be associated with those of other countries. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 23:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

   Dear Opiaterein, do you see any connection between words "moron" and "blocking"?!--Jure Grm, 12. day of August in Year of Our Lord Twotousandandnine, at 11:06 o'clock.

   Why are you so obsessed with blocking Jure (which we use only for disruptive edits and vandals anyway, not for political machinations like Croatian Wikipedia)? Why don't you focus on the voted policy itself, by actually providing arguments why it wouldn't work, or it shouldn't be done, sth other than "some Croats imagine that these three are completely separate languages" ? I'm sure that Opiaterein would have much, much more tolerance in case you provided actual arguments, and not simply commentless "no" which is absolutely unhelpful and uninformative :-) --Ivan Štambuk

   Dear mr. Štambuk, did I ask You anything?--Jure Grm, 12. day of August in Year of Our Lord Twotousandandnine, at 12:25 o'clock.

   Dear Carolina, it would also make it much more convenient for the users too. B/C/S are almost always taught together in English-language courses, and have shared grammars and dictionaries. By using separate headers, i.e. not mutually linking variant forms of what is fundamentally one and the same word, we actually make it more difficult for them. My Morton-Benson dictionary for English "river" gives both (deprecated template usage) reka and (deprecated template usage) rijeka, for "fly" it gives both (deprecated template usage) muha and (deprecated template usage) muva, for "salt" it gives both (deprecated template usage) sol and (deprecated template usage) so and so on. Separate headers would also induce disharmony in treatment, and users would have to waste time finding out which language section has the best information. --Ivan Štambuk 23:43, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

If for simplicity we take Croatian / Serbian and compare with the pair standard Mandarin in China / standard Taiwanese Mandarin, the difference is similar - different scripts (at least 20% of characters are different in simplified and traditional scripts), many different words, some differences in grammar, vocabulary usage, accent difference. What's more, the languages are called differently by native speakers: trad. 普通話／普通话 (pǔtōnghuà), simpl. 普通话 (pǔtōnghuà) (pinyin: Pǔtōnghuà) (mainland China), trad. 國語／国语 (guóyǔ), simpl. 国语 (guóyǔ) (pinyin: Guóyǔ) (Taiwan). (Let's not talk about attitudes to each other and politics.) Both standard variants are called Mandarin in English and there is no need to create different dictionaries, as the difference in scripts and variations can be handled with in one dictionary. Anatoli 01:07, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

myes,but entrysUNmergd>GREATduplicityW/O autosync[btw:INPUTMASKSrneeded!]+chin.dictVERYbad:(--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 01:40, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

True, entries are unmerged for simplified/traditional, if they are different and there is always a link to the equivalent (you can always see the equivalent in one of the entries, even if it's red - not created). That's a technical thing, Ivan has better ideas how they are going to handle two scripts - one entry for both Cyrillic and Roman or two entries with a link to each other, like this is done with Chinese Mandarin (jiantizi/fantizi). Anatoli 01:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

We link between the Cyrillic and Latin spelling directly in the inflection line, e.g. (deprecated template usage) стабљика : (deprecated template usage) stabljika. The duplication problem is similar as with Mandarin, but the active SC editors always make sure that the entries in both scripts are kept in sync. I normally create only the entry in Latin script, and generate the Cyrillic-script entry by a computer program I wrote (which monitors the clipboard and converts the entry on-the-fly: I just do CTRL+C, CTRL+V). Actually, Mandarin is in even more trouble than SC, because beside traditional and simplified script entries, it also gets pinyin entries, with and without tone marks.. So that's quadruplication in the worst case. --Ivan Štambuk

I am not sure why this was done this way but in my opinion, the Mandarin entries could be merged. Pinyin is just the romanisation (one for both jiantizi/fantizi) and no need to create extra entries for them either. Except for a couple of exceptions, TC converts to one SC only, not the other way around, so the conversion can be easy as well, if you use fantizi as a base. Anatoli 02:17, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't check your example properly before, the entries (deprecated template usage) стабљика : (deprecated template usage) stabljika look very similar to what it's done in Mandarin: 2 linked entries: 中國化 : 中国化. Anatoli 02:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Decision

By our current voting eligibility guidelines: fails 30-21-4. For your information, I considered anyone with one (1) edit prior to the start of the vote as eligible. -- Prince Kassad 00:26, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

This is what we call no consensus. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Correct. That's 60% in favor per Kassad's criteria, ~65% in favor if we increase the limit to 50 or 300 edits one week prior to the vote's inception. --Ivan Štambuk 02:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)