From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Aug 13 2004 - 16:47:15 CDT
On 13/08/2004 21:08, Peter Constable wrote:
> ISO 639 has separate entries for Moldavian (alpha2 = mo) and Romanian
> (alpha2 = ro). Moldavian was an artificially-constructed distinction
> created by the Soviet-backed administrations – an attempt at language
> engineering that failed. This included introduction of Cyrillic script
> in Moldova, but that country has reverted to use of Latin script.
> Every indication I have seen is that there is no language distinction
> between Moldavian and Romanian.
>
But what do the users of the language(s) say about this? Do they
consider these languages to be one or two? These are after all two
independent countries (with separate armies, and "a language is a
dialect with an army"), and they should be given the decisive voice on
whether these languages should be considered one or two.
Unicode has dug itself into a deep enough hole already this week in
trying to prescribe to users of a script, Hebrew, how their script
works. It should be careful to listen to users from small countries
rather than impose on them a western guess about a situation which they
know much better than we do.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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