Talk:Moldovan language/Archive 1

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Below are discussions that were made prior to 05:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

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Link on an article on the census: (gardianul: in Romanian) Bogdan | Talk 12:35, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The true story of Moldovan language

Actually we speak about the same language: romanian. But the russians wanted to make a difference hoping that in this way the russification of the romanian part of Moldova will be russian. This is absurd since we talk about the same nation and people who have the same language.


Could do with more on the dictionary. Does it try to exaggarete the differences? etc. Morwen - Talk 21:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There are no differences that can be exaggerated. The Prut river divides Romania and Moldova. The people living on the left bank speak Moldavian, while those on the right bank speak Romanian and some settlements are actually divided by the river between the two countries. Needless to say that the Moldavian/Romanian language divide is as arbitrary as one that would divide the language of the Londoners of the left bank of the Thames and the ones on the right bank.
That "dictionary" is actually a bizarre thing: it contains many archaisms (such as those of the mediaeval administration), idioms, various local trivia which do not belong to a dictionary, and some less used words that are claimed as Moldavian althought they are used elsewhere in Romania.
Of course, almost all ofthem can be found in Romanian dictionaries as well.
In all, I think for about 75% of the words (maybe even more), there are no google hits, showing how used they are.
And, as a political stance, the entry for "Romanian" says it means "Gypsy". Bogdan | Talk 21:12, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
25% of Slavic words are used in Moldovan as opposed to 20% of Slavic words in Romanian. Some say this is enough to separate the two languages Dmitriid 15:35, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

User:ChiLIBerserker: Moldovan is identical to Romanian. I speak Moldovan, and it is Romanian. Daco-Romanian by its definition includes Moldovan vernaculars, Ardeal vernaculars, et cetera. At least study the languages yourself before you make those kind of edits. There is no debate in the linguistic community, and the name of this article itself violates NPOV and violates scientific accuracy. Decius 10:52, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I see that this article presents a problem that is awkward for Wikipedia. I'm not trying to push a false view, I'm just presenting reality, uncut and straight up. Decius 11:54, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Even to refer to Moldovan as a "dialect" is inaccurate: it is barely even a dialect; is the Brooklyn speech a dialect of English? No. Moldovan is not even a dialect, let alone a language. I don't know who are the fucking idiots who are responsible for this false "language code", but I'm guessing they are Russian Soviet scum. Decius 12:25, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I know all that, yes. I know Moldavian is identical to Romanian, yes .. just that as a dictionary, we shouldn't be taking sides politically for or against anyone, no matter how dumb a political side may be. I quite understand what you're saying .. just that with it being a "controversial" issue, also if it shouldn't be, we should say that linguists say the languages are identical .. not that WE say the languages are identical. That might come off as POV, also if it isn't. User:ChiLIBerserker

A proper formula has to be found here. Improper formulas will be edited back & forth. We have to find "language we can agree on" in the phrase. Decius 13:17, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Seems decent enough like it is now. My beef was with the word "identical" .. as someone that has spent some time studying languages and dialects, I would never use that word in linguistics just because NO two human beings communicate in the same way, even when speaking the same language. Trained linguists can usually deduce which village or valley a person speaking language can come from .. so saying that Moldovan is "identical" to Romanian just can't be accurate, also if it is the same language. I wouldn't call the German spoken in my district of Vienna, where I currently live, identical to the german spoken in the neighbouring district. But I'm quite fine with the way it is now :D .. I quite accept that Moldovan is Romanian that has been split off from the language for silly political reasons and that it would make about as much sense as going to France and deciding that everyone south of the Seine doesn't speak French but a random other invented language. Just that in linguistics, claiming something to be "identical" doesn't come off very scientificly or neutral. -User:ChiLIBerserker 21:56, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

To Decius

Decius, daca esti din RM, ar trebui ca sa preiei administratia Wikipediei Moldovenesti. In momentul de fata ea este tinuta de un Rus anti-Semit care se da a fi Jumate-Evreu( desi denegreaza Holocaustul) si Jumate-Moldovean. Dar el nici nu vorbeste Romaneste si traduce de pe internet din Engleza in Romana dupa care scrie versiunea Romana( bine inteles cu greseli) in alfabetul chirilic. NU este NPOV ca un administrator sa scrie intr-o limba pe care nici nu o stie. Du-te la discutia de pe pagina principala a Wikipediei Moldovenesti ca sa vezi despre ce vorbesc. Incercam ca sa votam aceasta wikipedie ori ptr. a fi data unui nou administrator ori ptr. a fi stearsa.

Cu respect, Duca

Duca, mulţumesc pentru onoarea care m-ai accordato, dar pentru cǎ sânt prea ocupat cu alte proiecte, acum nu pot sǎ accept propunerea. Cu respect, Decius 16:22, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"slightly-modified"

In 1989, when Moldova started using the Romanian Latin alphabet, they used the same verision as the one used in Romania at the time. The change came in Romania only a few years later.

However, the official version is not always respected, and this is true in both countries. For example, some Romanian newspapers use the old version (Evenimentul Zilei, Academia Catavencu among others), while some Moldovan newspapers use the new version. (Accente, Garda, etc) bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 06:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Intro

Previously, the intro said that Moldovan was spoken by some number of people in Romania and the Vojvodina "under the name of Romanian." This is absurd. If one were to define Moldovan, it would have to be as "the Romanian language as spoken in Moldova" or else as "the language of the people of Moldova," or whatever. Even though this language is the same as Romanian, it is absurd to include Romanian speakers in a census of Moldovan. john k 9 July 2005 00:08 (UTC)

Um, no, not really jonny. I don't understand why that is so. What you just said does not make sense.

Mihaitza 9 July 2005 06:35 (UTC)

John, good luck in your attempts to get certain people to "understand". I can symphatize with you, as you and/or some of yours have resembling pattern in certain other topics.  :) 217.140.193.123 9 July 2005 06:50 (UTC)

Node you got your sick little wikipedia in "moldavian". Aren't you happy? Do you have to come here too and turn this article into something out of a communist newspaper, as well? Can you at least leave this page the way it is?

Duca 01:03, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

If it were out of a Communist newspaper, it would declare that the "soviet theories" section is truth. But it isn't. So just lay off it. --Node 01:55, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Transnistria is (de jure at least) part of Moldova. That's why it still has Moldovan as official language. I'm sure that if it wouldn't be, than Moldovan, wouldn't be one of its official languages. You may add a note to Moldova in the "official language of" section, and say that in Transnistria the official script is chyrillic. --Danutz

Node, I am gonna leave it for now since you seem to have restored a version that is a little bit better then the one before but I did change the part about the restoration of Moldovan into a "very similar script to that of Romanian". I only did this because it was factually wrong. Before 1992 Romanian was written with sint and with the i. Since Moldova made the language law before 1992, it used the "sint" version instead of the "sunt" version which was applicable in Romania only after 1992. This is why I changed it to "restored the latin script in the pre-1992 Romanian version". If you do not believe me you can research this and find out that I am telling the truth.

Another thing though, that bothers me, is the part about "vseo eu m-am dus". It really doesn't make sense at all from any gramatical prespective : russian or romanian. Do you have a source for that? And one more thing, the part with spoken romanian in moldova being more purist and written being not so purist, I would also like a source for those as well. And let's not repeat all your russian sources from the moldovan wiki discussion. Those are just forums and the "romanian-russian mix" was only observed among russian-speakers, not romanian-speakers. I would like a real source. Thnx

Duca 22:40, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

The thing is, Duca, is that most contact linguistic phenomena "do not make sense" from a grammatical perspective. For example, Nigerian Pidgin English "Make me self do like big man, after you bring de water, go call Obioma say A want make one brocade, baby blue make me and tafa do uncle." makes absolutely no sense in the framework of English grammar. "Dispela 21 minit vidio long Tok Pisin i soim ol rot bilong yusim Patisipetori Rurol Apresol Teknik insait long ol komyuniti." ("This fellow 21 minute video belong Talk Pidgin he show-him all road belong use him Participatory Rural Appraisal Technique inside belong all community") hardly mmakes sense either (it's Tok Pisin, the national language of Papua New Guinea).
If you read the article again, it says writing is purist and speaking is not. You got it backwards.
And it also says in the article that such contact linguistic phenomena are more commonly observed among people of Russian heritage... it doesn't say people of Moldovan heritage speak like that at all. --Node

Fair enough. It is the Russian speakers who use that. However that does not mean that in Moldova Russian-speakers use a hybrid-language to communicate. Maybe that example of "vseo eu m-am dus" just comes from someone that does not know proper Romanian.

In any case, please leave the "pre-1992 Romanian version of the Latin script" alone. I just explained to you above that before 1992, the Romanian script was the same as Moldova's now. The moldovans adopted the new language laws in 1989 so that's 3 years before the Romanians changed a little their script. At the time it wasn't a variation of the Romanian script but the actual script used in Romania prior to 1992.

Duca 05:42, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Certainly, Russian and Ukrainian speakers do not use a creole to communicate amongst themselves. Most Russian and Ukrainian speakers will speak to Romanian speakers in Russian or Ukrainian, and this is resented by many Romanian speakers. However, younger Moldovans of a Slavic heritage (ie, teenagers and younger) socially are mixed more with Moldovans of a Romanian heritage. The Russian and Ukrainian spoken by these kids is not "proper", as it is infiltrated by many Moldovan words, and uses many calques of Moldovan idioms. Due to a mixed language environment for some children (Ukrainian, Russian, and Moldovan), they developped a creole language to communicate with each other. Earlier it was based more on Slavic words, but many Slavic words have been replaced by Moldovan words, and it uses a mix of Slavic and Moldovan grammar and vocabulary, with some original constructions ("vseo" to pluralise, is not seen in Russian or Ukrainian, and the Romanian equivalent, "toata", is not used for this purpose either). It is fair to say, though, that it is based mostly off of Moldovan, with some Russian and Ukrainian influences. It is also used by some younger children of a mixed marriage, whose parents do not speak separate languages to them but instead use a sort of jargon to communicate. --Node


I see. Well, based on what you have told me, this is present among Russians and Ukrainians or people of mixed marriages, but not Romanians in Moldova. But this is not really pertinent to the article at hand: "moldovan language". We should make another article that touches on this subject and even expands on it.

Another thing. Many Romanians who live in North America use a sort of hybrid kind of language which contains many english or englisized words(especially arond the town of Boyan, in Aleberta,Canada); if you ask them what language they speak at home, they won't tell you they speak a hybrid of Romanian and English, they will tell you they speak Romanian. I think this case is very similar to the Russians and Ukrainians in RM. What language do the latter claim they speak: Romanian or Russian/Ukrainian.

Also what are your academic sources of the word "crasavic". In any case I do not think that this article is being NPOV right now. These little additions have to stop Node, because it's very clear that you have a little agenda here. Let's not start the same discussion that we had on the moldo wikipedia. The point of the slang and words like "crasavic", etc. etc. these are by no means pertinent to the article. Even if what you are saing is true, they are just regionalisms of Romanian and in any corner of Romania you will find similar regionalisms. Hungarians in Romania, probably use a "creole" like language as well but that has no place in an ecyclopedia either. It's pretty clear that all that your little additions do, is to make Romanian and Moldovan seem more different, rather then similar. It's pretty sad that even today, there are people in the world that continue the Stalinist theory of a "sepparate Moldovan language" and how young people have adopted this creole like language in between Romanian and Russian. Ever since 1940, people in Moldova have been told about the "new language of the young"(which existed only in the sick minds of Stalin and his loyal followers[some being alive to this day]). I am going to have to please ask you to either stop putting these things in or if you make another change next time, present ample academic sourses to back them up. Otherwise I am going to take this to someone higher in authority.


Duca 13:20, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

What is all this with "it may be true but it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia"? You say the page is POV right now... the stuff about slang usage is FACT. It does not say "It makes it more different! See?!? It's a different language! I told you!!!!!". Any higher authority you take this to will disagree -- if it is a fact, it is OK, in this sense. And it's true that slang usage of Slavic words is much higher in Rep. Moldova than in Romania. --Node

Node, it's like we're speaking two different languages, man. All I am saying, is that you need a good, reliable source for that, before you stick it in. Any higher authority would agree with me there.

Duca 22:26, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

And yet, you don't demand a source or removal of the "Soviet-era theories" section because it agrees with your POV, by discounting them at the end? --Node

Sorry, I corrected myself, on this discussion page, and I wrote "de jure": Transnistria is (de jure at least) part of Moldova. That's why it still has Moldovan as official language. I'm sure that if it wouldn't be, than Moldovan, wouldn't be one of its official languages. You may add a note to Moldova in the "official language of" section, and say that in Transnistria the official script is chyrillic. So, I don't see information in the Somali language, about the fact that Somali is official in Somalia and Somaliland (as Somaliland is part of Somalia yet). Or that Armenian language is official in Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh separatist republic in Azerbaidjan. In the Russian language, i added once Transnistria, and it was expelled from there. Currently Transnistria has the same status as Gagauzia. Why don't you add Gagauzia? Crimea in Ukraine has a similar status. Why don't you also add Crimea in the Ukrainian langauge article? Do you even see how POV you are? --Danutz

Vojvodina is part of Serbia, and yet it is listed here... Transdniester is notable because the official script is different than in the rest of Moldova. What bugs me most about you and all your little friends here is that you accuse me of being POV, but think your side is NPOV when in fact it's just as bad or even worse. --Node

Original reasearch

Node_ue, I am asking you to bring credible references for the paragraph about the "creole". If you won't, then it falls into the Wikipedia:No original research policy and that paragraph has to be deleted from Wikipedia. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 08:42, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

"Original reserach" policy only applies when:

  • the text in question introduces a theory or method of solution; or
  • it introduces original ideas; or
  • it defines new terms; or
  • it provides new definitions of old terms; or
  • it introduces an original argument purporting to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position described in the article; or
  • it introduces neologisms.

The main purpose of the policy is to exclude crackpot theories, not things which are factual. For example, it is not meant to exclude an article on Ablzodsfpsdf language just because the language has never been written about anywhere else, rather, it is mean to exclude text on another article saying that "Ablzodsfpsdf, although now spoken in Africa, was originally spoken by South American cannibals who brought it over in 900 BC", or that "most squirrels can speak fluent German". Just because something has never been written about before, does not automatically make it original research.

Please read the policy more careful. Wikipedia cannot possibly know whether Ablzodsfpsdf exists or not. If about that language has never been written anything, then Wikipedia will not include it. It's that simple. Wikipedia is not a primary source. If you have some original research, you get it published in the peer-reviewed "Fooian Linguistics Review" and only then you can create an article. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 17:37, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
Fine. Then I demand a source for "Contemporary Romanian - highlighted words are French or Italian loanwords:
Toate fiinţele umane se nasc libere şi egale în demnitate şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu raţiune şi conştiinţă şi trebuie să se comporte unele faţă de altele în spiritul fraternităţii.
Romanian, excluding French or Italian loanwords - highlighted words are Slavic loanwords:
Toate fiinţele omeneşti se nasc slobode şi deopotrivă în destoinicie şi în drepturi. Ele sunt înzestrate cu cuget şi înţelegere şi trebuie să se poarte unele faţă de altele după firea frăţiei.
", from the article Romanian language, as I could not find a source. --Node 20:50, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

The original point of the NOR policy was actually to keep non-experts from touting their crackpot physics theories on Wikipedia, where they do not belong. How many of the phrases on Common phrases in different languages do you think you can find a source for??? Can you find a source for every single sentence in Romanian language? --Node

You are confusing an "example" with "original research". An example is something that supports or illustrates a theory and they are used throughout Wikipedia. (See English grammar) But examples can only be used to support a theory that is not "original research". If your creole had a credible source, nobody would object having a few examples. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 21:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I am confused - information which falls under the category of "common sense" is not original research. Discussion of a supposed Creole that nobody has written about before is clearly original research. john k 21:12, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

John, how does that translation fall under the category of common sense? All but the first translation appear NOWHERE ELSE. This makes it original research. --Node
Node, for the sake of conformity, please go to Spanish grammar and delete all the examples, which also do appear NOWHERE ELSE and that makes them original research. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 10:10, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

These guys have a point Node. On another subject, does anyone know if the protests of 2oo2 against the "obligatory Russian language in schools" was successful in making the government back down or not?Domnu Goie 23:52, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Goie, this doesn't count for much as you are part of the Romanian crowd -- you and your buddies, Danutz, Danutz, Critzu, Duca, Bogdan, etc. are always pushing for a Romanian POV. As for obligatory Russian, I'm not sure but I think that the government made it so that Russian language requirements in Moldovan-medium schools were relaxed quite a bit, but they didn't revert to the way it was before.

Let me tell you, there is something different between you and me. You hate people. You hate Russians. I do not. If my viewpoint were the opposite of yours, I would hate people from Romania but I don't. Sure, many if not most of them disagree with me, but I don't think they're rude or nasty like you think about Russians. Romania has done some pretty objectionable things from time to time, but I don't hate them for it. Unionist rallies in the 90s in Chisinau are a bitter memory for me (I wasn't there, but it was a big deal to my family, since my parents etc were born there, so I heard a lot about it), and for many Moldovans who would like to put that behind them. Everyone in Moldova except the most extreme of the extremists seem to have come to terms with the fact that Russian and Ukrainian heritage people are not leaving anytime soon (those that will leave, already left when Moldova gained independence), and that both groups are going to have to live together for quite some time. Most Romanians however seem to think that Russian and Ukrainian heritage people in Moldova are going to be expelled. Most Romanians seem to think that Romanian heritage people in Moldova hate Russians. The unionist people (generally only unionists though) seem to feel that the political battle they are waging for union with RM is a battle which is felt in the hearts of all Moldovans. This is trash, only a minority of Moldovans favour a union with Romania. Moldova has many political, social, and economic problems which it needs to sort out before it will even seriously consider a union with Romania. There is also the problem of the large Russian and Ukrainian minority -- will they maintain their rights in a united Romania, or will they be forgotten about by the authorities in Bucaresti? And what about politics? Current politics in Moldova are surely incompatible with those in Romania. Yet, you romanticists fantasise about how wonderful it will be to have one nation with your Romanian brothers in Moldova, and somehow you think they all want the same thing. You need to be reacquainted with reality. --Node

Poor little Node :)

My poor Node, how little you understand us.

Let me enlighten you, my little child( albeit I hardly know where to start). Well for one thing, you really got the whole union thing wrong. Hardly anyone of us seriously conceives a union right now, at least a union in the sense that is understood by those who compare it with the 1918 union. Even IF a union would occur it would most likely be a confederal and loose one, but even that is very very long term.

Second of all, in the way you seem to argue your point, you actually DO SHOW that you DO HATE US ROMANIANS because you ultimately accuse "OUR LITTLE CROWD" of hating RUSSIANS. Let me make something very clear. Most of us have nothing against the regular Russian. The regular IVAN lived a life much like his Romanian/Moldovan counterpart( in other words a life under communism and terror). It is this Russian that we have a lot in common with. What we do hate, is the communists Russians. The ones that were implanted in Moldova after 1940. We make a very clear distinction between the Russians and Ukrainians who lived in Moldova prior to 1940 and have been born in that land and those who were send over by Stalin to persecute and terrorize the natives(regardless of their nationality). On top of that, lets not forget that in 1940 the native-Russians of Moldova(prior to 1940) were not that happy that Bessarabia(Moldova) was being occupied by the USSR.

You seem to talk about an "Imperialist Romania" that wants to CONQUER the Republic of Moldova and take all the Russians and Ukrainaians and kill them all or something. This in my opinion just shows how much YOU are, IN FACT, disconnected from reality. Did the Hungarians in Transilvania dissapear? Did their rights vanish? I would say they got more rights since right now their political party has been in government for the past 9 years. If some 1.5 mil. Hungarians have survived and managed to increase their rights, why would that be so hard for 200.000 Russians and 300.000 Ukrainaians?


I would go on and argue but I think I have pointed out the main flaws in your thinking, which by the way betrays the fact that behind the whole charade with the "Moldovan Language", "Moldovan Wikipedia", etc. etc. , there is a hidden hate for Romanians (since like I said again you believe that all Romanians hate all Russians). To put it bluntly, it is because of this totally negative, even racist mentality of yours that I think you should not be contributing on these matters.

Domnu Goie 07:53, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

I said "many, if not most" Romanians hate Russians. I did not say all hate Russians. And despite what you say, I'm still determined that it's true. Obviously not many people advocate a complete and total union... I never said that. But regardless of what you say, there were the demonstrations in Chisinau in the 1990s where people said "pack your bags and go back to Russia"... these people weren't *that* widely supported in Moldova but it seems like many Romanians supported them. And, even if I do discriminate against Romanians, as you claim, that does not mean I hate them. I do not hate you although I don't much like you; I don't hate Ronline and I consider him to be a very logical and thinking person; there are many Romanians who I like and who obviously don't "hate" Russia like you do. And again, you're going for the oppression complex. Big bad USSR, oppressing Russians and Moldovans alike. Well, obviously the USSR was a great oppressor, but you have shown on discussions at mo.wiki that you associate Russians with the USSR, no matter their political views. --Node

Node for your own good buddy, stop talking cuz you are only making yourself look worst.

First of all the demonstrations in moldova in the early 90s were not about "pack your bags and go home" like some neo-communists like to claim. I don't know if you are a neo-communist yourself or if you just heard this from neo-communists but the demonstrations were for Moldovan-self determination. Hundreds of tousands of people took part and it was supported by a lot of people in mOldova.

What the hell are you talking about? RM gained independence in August of 1991. No demonstration after that would be demanding Moldovan independence. After all, why would you demonstrate for something you already have??????

Second of all, you say that "you can still discriminate without hating". NODE MAN! Just the fact that you, yourself aknowledge that it may be possible that you may discriminate while not hating( WHICH BY THE WAY MAKES NO SENSE) makes you an unacceptable contributor here.

I never acknowledged that I discriminate against anyone. "And, even if I do discriminate against Romanians, as you claim, that does not mean I hate them" is not a statement that I really do discriminate against Romanians. "even if I do" means "If it happened to be that way, which it isn't now".

Once again, you don't know me or "US" at all, Node.

Which side tried to bring in users against the previously agreed rules of the voting?? Which side called people communists, stalinists, fags, and any number of other offensive terms? Was it the side which agrees with a Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia, or the side which disagrees? Maybe if you and your little friends can learn to be a bit nicer, you will get what you want more. There is an English idiom, "you get more flies with honey than vinegar", which should be obvious what it means (since honey is sweet and vinegar is very bad tasting). --Node 06:14, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Domnu Goie 23:26, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Removal of examples by Mihaitza

Mihai, do you dispute that contact linguistic phenomena occur in Moldova? The recent version of the article doesn't try to classify them as before, but rather leaves it open, with a suggestion that it may be bilingual code switching.

The examples I gave are not from a Russian manuscript, they are from real life. While there may not be previous literature about contact phenomena in Moldova (at least not which you consider credible since you hate Russians and think everything they write must be lies), there is literature about bilingual code switching. If you read that article, you will find that it is relatively common in situations where both participants in a conversation are bilingual, regardless of languages involved. Thus, it's not a separate theory or even a stretch to say that it occurs in Moldova -- it occurs in nearly every country on Earth, in any large bilingual community.

Just because your nationalism tells you to delete anything which suggests anything about RM may be even a little bit different, doesn't mean it's right. Do you have justification against these examples? Again, they're not from Soviet literature.

Node 06:20, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Infobox

Node, the infobox should be removed because you need to understand that Moldovan is not a "real" language and hence does not deserve an infobox. This article is more about describing the term "Moldovan language" than the actual language known as Moldovan. Therefore, it doesn't need an infobox. And even if it were to have an infobox, it is absolutely absurd to assert that Moldovan is the 36th most spoken language in the world with speakers all over Romania, Vojvodina, etc. Look at Montenegrin language and see that it also doesn't have an infobox. Again - Moldovan is a controversial term, it is not a real language and this article should only seek to explain what the term refers to, why it arose, and also the minor differences between Romanian and so-called Moldovan. As User:John Kenney put it, "The Moldovan language [under that name] is not spoken by people in Romania and the Vojvodina". For me, and I think for the majority of Romanians, it is insulting to suggest that the language I speak is called "Moldovan". Romania had nothing to do with the USSR and all that, and so just because of a Stalinist policy on calling the language "Moldovan", why should I now accept that my native language can also be called "Moldovan"? The would be like the Australian government calling their language "Australian" and saying in the article that "Australian is the most studied language worldwide and the international language of communication, Australian is the official language of the USA, UK and tens of other countries... oh, just that it's called English everywhere else". You can't say I haven't compromised, or that I haven't understanding or anything, but I think you're taking it too far now. By the way, the interwiki code for the Moldovan Wikipedia should be "молдовеняскэ (чириликэ)" not just "молдовеняскэ". I don't understand why it was changed from Moldoveana to "молдовеняскэ" and not to ""молдовеняскэ (чириликэ)" Ronline 07:11, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Node that there should be there should be an infobox for Moldovan. You point out that Montenegrin lacks one, then that should have one too. And why not? There is a Serbian language, Croatian language, Bosnian language and even a Serbocroatian language for crying out loud. Bulgarian language and Macedonian language have their own. Then we Catalan language and Valencian. Not to mention Danish language, Swedish language, and Norwegian language. Outside of Europe, there's Indonesian language and Malay language. The list goes on.
My point is the fact that the languages are similar enough should not stop them from having their own infobox. I do agree with you, Ronline, that 26 million should be removed. I'd limit it to the 3.6 million as mentioned in the article. --Chris 07:38, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Node ( aka Cris) please try to be mature

You need documentation for what I erased. I erased it beacuse of a lack of documentation. If I say that I saw a big huge monster in a Scottish lake and I put this information on wikipedia as if it was a true fact, then it will be erased in 2 minutes since I have no proper documentation to prove it. Personal real-life accounts do not count. You need a legit. source.

The second aspect which I wanted to point out, Node, is for you to stop making new accounts. Let's all try to use just one. Creating new accounts and making it look like you are not the only one who thinks that the Moldovan is a language by itself, does not make you right.

Now I would very politely ask you to stop generalizing and discriminating. Goie is right, you know. By generalizing so much you will only get people irritated with you, not agreeing with you. You should follow your own example about the "flies and the honey". I noticed you do discriminate quite alot. I have never expressed my hate towards Russians here or in mo.wiki. I hate the concept of a "moldovan language" since it does not exist. I do not hate an entire people. I am not the one that called you a fag, Stalinist, etc. etc. Your homosexual orientation does not concern me. I am a libertarian and I have nothing against gays.

I just want you to know that if we cannot have a mature discussion here, I will really ask for this page to be locked.

Lastly, I will like to point out here that you agreed that you would make the moldovan versions in Moldoveneaska(Kirilika). You have not. This means that the deal which we all reached after the vote on jul 10, has been broken. We need a new vote and I have already reserved the right(as explained by Ronline) to call for one 45 days after the last vote.Mihaitza 01:20, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi there, before you accuse me of being a sockpuppet of Node, please look at my profile and my edits. I concern myself with mostly Philippine-language topics but I am into Romance linguistics as well. I was checking out this Moldovan page and saw the conflict here. I think you guys are being needlessly unreasonable about this. I think we all need to resort to a compromise. There are other languages, which I have mentioned above, which are in the same position as Moldovan & Romanian. --Chris 01:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi there, before you accuse me of being a sockpuppet of Node, please look at my profile and my edits. I concern myself with mostly Philippine-language topics but I am into Romance linguistics as well. I was checking out this Moldovan page and saw the conflict here. I think you guys are being needlessly unreasonable about this. I think we all need to resort to a compromise. There are other languages, which I have mentioned above, which are in the same position as Moldovan & Romanian. --Chris 01:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Christopher, be careful. The revert squad here will be swift to tell you that Moldovan and Romanian are closer than Bosnian and Croatian in their absurd view. Perhaps a more comparable situation is Dari/Farsi and Moldovan/Romanian... --Node 01:57, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Mihaitza, please look up more information on Christopher Sundita. He has been a member at Wikipedia for a long time, and is fluent in a few languages which I am not, including for example Tagalog. I find it highly strange that you suggest I am the same user as him.
Please show me where I have generalised or discriminated. "many if not most" is not a generalisation, a generalisation is "all".
If you think something doesn't exist, then why would you hate it? I don't think the Loch Ness Monster exists, but I don't hate it. I don't think Bigfoot exists, but I don't hate it or the concept. I don't believe in ghosts, but I have no problem with the belief that they do. +
To hate something that you believe does not exist is an irrational hate. I do not believe that there is an American language separate from English. Some people have in the past and still do today advocate for using different terms for English in America ("American language") and English elsewhere ("English language"). I do not hate the American language, or even the concept of a separate term or separate language. If somebody wanted to say Californians speak "Californian" instead of "English", I would think the idea was absurd, but I most certainly wouldn't go around beating people back and hating "Californian" like you hate "Moldovan".
(I am not the author of the original post but:) While some people have hard feelings about stupid things, such as the name of the language they speak, I feel that your argument is failing the purpose and spirit of Wikipedia. To start from your example, I think that adding on wikipedia an article on "Californian" as the language of California would give false information to the wikipedian community. You may not be aware, but the manipulation of history, of language, of ethnicity played (and still plays) a key role in all sorts of imperial (e.g. russian/soviet) or extremist ideologies. This is why it is important to call a cat a cat, and not a Schmurtz.
While you may have a source for the individual word etymologies of the translations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you have given no source that gives them as alternative translations as illustrative examples of loanword proliferation. Until you do that, I don't see any reason that the data I added should be removed. It is very clear that what I have said is not an unproven theory but a widely agreed-upon fact: code-switching and other contact language phenomena occur in nearly every language contact situation on Earth, especially when it's contact on a massive basis like Romanian and Russian in Moldova instead of, say, Gagauz and Romanian in Moldova. To say that code switching occurs in Moldova is not a controversial statement to any linguist, nor is it a "theory" or even an "unproven fact". And thus, to give an example of code switching is not original research either, but an example of a proven fact.
I think we all agree that there are certain differences between Romanian Romanian and whatever is spoken in Moldavia. However, I would say that this article should take example from the Austrian German page.
LASTLY, AS I HAVE NOTED MANY TIMES BEFORE ON MO.WIKIPEDIA, I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THE TEXT OF INTERWIKI LINKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111 I CAN NOT CHANGE THEM! ONLY DEVELOPERS CAN! I AM NOT A DEVELOPER!!! IF YOU WANT IT CHANGED, ASK A DEVELOPER!!!! OK!??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ---Node 01:57, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
First and foremost, as I said on the mo.wiki, please can we stop accusing people of things they haven't done. As far as I know, Node does not have any sockpuppets around here. Now - secondly, as to Mihaitza's deletions, I don't really have a view on that. However, I've changed the infobox to make it more realistic - firstly, Moldovan is not spoken significantly outside Moldova and Transnistria. Yes, there may be Moldovan minorities around the place, but these a small in number, and those that work in Romania as migrants mostly say they speak Romanian. With total speakers, I put a note saying that Romanian is spoken by 26 million. This is a compromise between Node's version and Chris' version. And that's all I changed. Another thing that should be noted somewhere more significantly, is that 66% of Romano-Moldovan speakers in Moldova speak Romanian, not Moldovan. So technically Moldovan is only spoken by 1.2 million people (i.e. 1.2 million say they speak Moldovan). We can't just say the others speak Moldovan just because Moldovan is the official language, if we're really going into technicalities. Chris – Romanian and Moldovan are like Catalan and Valencian - that's probably the easiest way to sum it up. The Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian system is a bit more complex. Ronline 10:06, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi Ronline, I would like to explain my reversion of your edits. As Chris Sundita noted, his edits were an attempt at compromise, but you edited them right after and basically rolled back his changes without an explanation. Thus, I basically reverted to the last version which had been explained.

I think I agree with regards to Moldovan being spoken in Romania, but it's a difficult choice and will require some more thought on my part. --Node 22:00, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

And, for what it's worth, I would propose Dari and Farsi as a better example than Catalan and Valencian. --Node 22:01, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Talking about Dari and Farsi is probably a troll.

...how so?
Because it's not a meaningful example for most readers, I presume. Instead, talking about the German language, or the UK-English, is probably closer to our needs. So, wouldn't you laugh if English, as it is spoken in Scotland (with that cool accent and with celtic words), would be called Scottish? Also have you ever heard Swiss german and North Germany german? Or, for that matter, I would find it funny if Austrian german would be called Austrian. My point is here that you do not need two languages if you have two states. If Moldovan statehood is only based on the Moldovan "language", then there's a problem. In Austria, you have a history, culture, and interests which justify statehood, so they don't need to invent a new language to justify their existence. Maybe Moldovans should invest in understanding their real differences w.r.t. Romanians, if any. Then, they wouldn't need this sort of politics-driven linguistics.
When I visited Chisinau, I was really puzzled by the complexity of the post-soviet society. There are russian-speakers that have a hard time forgetting the Soviet empire (and they are really bitter). It is also there that I heard -- from peasants in the market -- the Romanian that is closest to litterary Romanian, and with absolutely no Moldovan accent (even less than in Iasi). There are also the many Romanians that were workers and functionnaries in the Soviet state, which have a strong accent, but who were speaking clear, correct Romanian.

You don't need examples to show the obvious -- Romanian and Modovan are the same language, and this has to be said clearly.

This has been discussed already. Do you have anything new to add?

Maybe you want to call it Moldovan Romanian (like American English?). Nevertheless, there clearly is a problem with this article. There should be an explanation saying that Moldovan is basically Romanian, with 1. the problem of the politics, which invented a moldovan language 2. the russian influence, and those "creole" expressions.

1 and 2 seem contradictory to me. If you don't deny the existance of Russian influences, as many people seem to, how can you assert that Romanian and Moldovan are the same? Surely it was initially a political creation, but over time the speech of Chisinau and Tiraspol (and, to a much lesser extent, other cities and rural areas of RM as well) has actually diverged a bit from the speech from right across the river Prut.

The article should start with this, because this is the most important problem concerning the language. It's not a regular language, you see...

How is that?

Significant, important, major, etc. -- Subjectivity 101??

While it is my personal opinion that spelling differences have no significant effect in this case, what is "significant" or not is 100% subjective.

I may view the independence of Moldova from the USSR as a "significant" event in the history of the world, but another person may say it's not significant. I may say that a hurricane caused "major" damage, but who has seen much worse might say it was not major. I might say that Celine Dion is a very important person, while someone else might say she is not important.

This is not the first time your group has attempted to squeeze in words which are subjective in ANY situation, claiming that in this particular situation they are fact rather than opinion.

I did not say "code switching makes a significant difference between language in Romania and language in Moldova". I could've said that, but I didn't because it is NOT OBJECTIVE, but rather entirely SUBJECTIVE.

Do you understand this concept now?? --Node 05:23, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

You could've said that, but you didn't neither because it was objective, nor because it was subjective, but rather because it would've been entirely WRONG. Do you understand this concept now?
No, you don't. I'll rephrase my claim in a way that it only states facts -- it will be longer, and boring, and convey the same meaning, but if that makes you happy, so be it. --Gutza 15:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


Oh, and on a side note, since you brought it up, your code switching bears has the same weight as helium. I switch on a daily basis between Romanian and English with my friends. That's called fooling around, not inventing a new language. --Gutza 20:07, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Finally, one last question -- I noticed that you seem to hold that there indeed are notable differences between Romanian and whatever they speak in Rep. Moldova. I see no such proof in the articles, can you share the information which makes you hold that un-publishable views? --Gutza 20:12, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Here are my references, now please cease your whinging:

(Thank you for the gentlemanly tone; moved the references and added comment in the section below --Gutza 11:24, 5 August 2005 (UTC))

--Node 09:27, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm interested in reading these articles you've reviewed. Could you give me a citation, please? Thanks. --Chris 21:02, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Hi, Chris! What do you need a citation on? --Gutza 21:12, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
The articles, please. :-) --Chris 21:57, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 :-) You said "articles", I don't know what articles you meant. Ok, let's talk about this article -- I made several changes in the article, please let me know on which change(s) you'd like citation(s) for. --Gutza 22:06, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Oh. Nevermind then. I thought you were referring to something else. Sorry. --Chris 22:33, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Node's References

Hope you don't mind me splitting the references in a different section, I want to comment on them before I start hacking on the article. (I copied your sig above too, so we can continue to follow who said what.)

All references below provided by Node 09:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

"Linguists across the world are, though, in agreement: "Moldovan" is Romanian." -- thank you, good reference! --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Please see the comment by J Cassian. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
"Stalin justified the creation of the Moldavian SSR by claiming that a distinct "Moldavian" language was an indicator that "Moldavians" were a separate nationality from the Romanians in Romania. In order to give greater credence to this claim, in 1940 Stalin imposed the Cyrillic alphabet on "Moldavian" to make it look more like Russian and less like Romanian; archaic Romanian words of Slavic origin were imposed on "Moldavian"; Russian loanwords and phrases were added to "Moldavian"; and a new theory was advanced that "Moldavian" was at least partially Slavic in origin. (Romanian is a Romance language descended from Latin.) In 1949 Moldavian citizens were publicly reprimanded in a journal for daring to express themselves in literary Romanian. The Soviet government continued this type of behavior for decades." -- nice, thank you again! --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Not sure what about this leads any credence to your version of the claims upon which we disagree -- this is about Russian repression, not about whether or not they're really a separate language. The first sentence says "The Moldovan dialect of Romanian, spoken by the majority of the people of Bessarabia, was viewed by both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an impediment to controlling the local populace." --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


Great reference, can I post my CV on Wikipedia too? This one has to go, it has no relevance on anything. --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
It's a reference to the titling of his works. He uses the term "Moldovan dialect of Romanian". --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


Is this a "reference"? This looks like a homework, it has no academic credibility whatsoever. --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
And who decides whether or not it is credible? As far as I know, the test of credibility is references. It provides good references, and it doesn't make any wildly unreasonable claims. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
  • http://vitalie.tripod.com/culture.htm -- states that "the language in Moldova is very muddled now - it's a mixture of Russian and Romanian", and as I have said numerous times before, "although most people in villages still can't use the Latin alphabet and use the one they had learnt in school decades ago - the Russian"
"The language itself was renamed into "Moldavian", although it never really changed (it has become more of a dialect over the years)." -- this is a Moldovan native speaking, and he's saying that the language never really changes. Yes, he says it became "more of a dialect", but (1) he's not saying it's a dialect straight on, it's "more of a [...]"; and (2) he's probably not a linguist, so he used a word he felt was appropriate without understanding its true connotations --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
But you, on the other hand, are a linguist and so do understand its "true connotations"? Please, spare us. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Are you seriously citing the biography of a musical band from a commercial site as an academic reference for the status of a language -- in an encyclopedia? --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I am. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I didn't even bother reading this one through, it's an anonymous travelogue, how can that have any bearing on anything? Can I write anonymous blogs and cite them? --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
It's not "anonymous", if you read the blog -- which is very long -- you can find much identifying information about this person. If you did't read it, how can you know whether or not it has bearing on anything? Because it disagrees with you? --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Mark, you may be interested in my comments regarding konst's understanding of what "Moldavian language" is (see the "Comments" link on the page). Anyway, it is rather perplexing to observe your easiness in using as a serious linguistic argument the impressions collected by a Russian guy while drinking beer during a short trip in Chisinau. Mario, 25 August 2005
I took a look at your comments. Some are very interesting, and some I actually agree with. But I stopped reading when you said "that barbaric slang which you call moldavian". The fact that he's a casual visitor makes his account more important, in my view. He does not have a political agenda, like many Russian or Romanian linguists seem to. Plus, his account is corroborated by similar accounts from Americans and others. --Node 03:15, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
Many people speak Magyar in Romania. Does that mean the average Romanian speaks Magromanian or something?! --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
The point of that is that Cyrillic is still in widespread use. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Another essay by a Moldovan on the same site, in the same context -- you might wish to read this: http://www.east-west-wg.org/cst/cst-mold/a_vera.html --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I already did, however it isn't very long and doesn't speak specifically to similarities and differences, but rather the brotherhood of Romanians and Moldovans, the fact that this was hidden during the Soviet era, and that it is now embraced. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
This concludes with "Moldavians are somewhere in between, in the grey zone with a possibility to go towards both directions. It is maybe more probable that they will unite as a nation with the Romanians, but nothing is sure in history." -- does this really prove anything? --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
As I said, the last two links are "both very interesting". I never said they were directly relevant to the question of dialect, language, identical, or what. --Node 11:49, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I was unable to find any relevant information in this article. --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I have to go to lunch, I'll be back. --Gutza 11:06, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Node's Claims

So, let's talk on positive statements instead of negatives. What are your actual claims regarding Moldovan? You seem to insist it's a dialect in the references (just as American vs. British), but you push for a distinct language in the article? So where do you really stand?! --Gutza 13:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

My claims are that in solid terms it is 1) a jargon or creole, you may find books on Russian lexical and grammatical influences; 2) Moldovan is, in a sense, a Romanian dialect; 3) It may be considered a separate language for reasons of sociolinguistics or perhaps sprachpolitik. So while the official written form is obviously identical or nearly identical with Romanian, the everyday usage of people (especially in urban areas; rural areas have much less Russian influence) is not so much identical. --Node 21:38, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, let's talk on your claims, and include or remove stuff from the article based on the conclusion we reach here.

  1. Yes, you may even find a Moldovan-Romanian dictionary. I hope you agree that (A1) the dictionary was written on a political order and (A2) that it's ridiculous. Given (A1), why were they unable to come up with a non-ridiculous piece of writing? Cunning and shrewd as I might consider the "Moldovan" political element, I don't think they are stupid -- just look at what we're wasting our time with. What gives, then?
  2. Please define "in a sense." Is it the same as "in a sense that allows me to change my mind any time I damn please", by any chance? Because that's my main problem in this exchange -- you're a moving target. I won't accuse you of anything, I ended up being utterly and completely confused regarding your motivations in this thing, but that doesn't change the fact that your arguments and comments switch back and forth between "dialect" and "language" based on the strangest of reasons, in my (obviously subjective) view.
  3. This we'll address once you answer my latest questions in Talk:Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache.

--Gutza 22:26, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

How is it original research to suggest that a jargon with native speakers is a creole? Do you know anything about linguistics at all, or are you doing this all because of your nationalist convictions?? For confirmation of this fact (ie, that a jargon which is nativised is always --not just sometimes, but ALWAYS-- considered a creole), please see John Holm's fabulous "An introduction to pidgins and creoles" (ISBN 0521585813). Is there any way this case could be different, ie that a variety considered a jargon but with native speakers would not be considered a creole, or at least a creoloid? --Node 21:32, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

You generalized the statement. And that's consistent with your acknowledged convictions. While I fully agree that some teens today may speak a creole, that's not even remotely the same with your "The spoken [Moldovan] language [...] could be called a creole since it is the native speech for some" -- you were careful to include "for some" at the end of the statement, but the meaning of the phrase is a sweeping generalization. --Gutza 21:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

With regards to Gagauzia, have you ever been there? All the reference books on language in Moldova make it clear that Russian is the most widely-known language in Gagauzia, even more widely-known than Gagauz itself. The books I cited about sprachpolitik and related sociolinguistic issues similarly confirm what is reported on many of these websites, ie that in Chisinau, Russian is still predominant. --Node 21:32, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Please, please, don't go on saying "have you been there?" or "have you been born there?" or "do you have relatives there?" -- it insults people's intelligence. Especially when immediately after "have you been there?" you come back with "all the reference books make it clear that". Now, don't draw the sword yet: you're probably right about this one. (This doesn't negate what I just said, the fact that you happen to be right about this one in particular --and that I acknowledge it instead of fighting it blindly -- doesn't mean that my observations are wrong.) But sorry, I'll revert the edit we were talking in the previous paragraph -- please rephrase it more sensibly instead of re-revering. --Gutza 21:56, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Gagauzia and Transnistria I can agree with, that's consistent with what I have read so far, but I'll temper down your statement about Chisinau, I don't think that's right, although I've read statements both ways. --Gutza 21:58, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

P.P.S. You keep on forgetting to address your undocumented vandalism of the 2nd note -- care to explain which specific statements you don't agree with? --Gutza 21:59, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

"Vandalism" is a term that should only be used in cases of apparent bad faith edits. "should be considered" or "should not be considered" is clearly POV. If you can't see this, perhaps we'll have to discuss the specifics of objectivity and NPOV in much more detail. --Node 05:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
Isn't using the term "Moldovan language" to refer to a spoken Russian/Romanian pidgin/creole spoken in Moldova rather muddying up this issue? As I understand it, the standardized "Moldovan language" as written and spoken by the vast majority of the Romance-language speakers of Moldova is not a creole, but rather is the same language as Romanian, with a slight orthographical difference in the written language, and perhaps some minor accent issues in the spoken language. You are making the issue much more confusing by bringing in this issue of a creole. The "Moldovan language," as defined by the Moldovan constitution, simply is not a Creole. If you want to call a Russian/Romanian creole spoken in Moldova the "Moldovan language," I suppose there's nothing to stop you, but it has to be carefully distinguished from the official "Moldovan language," which is identical to Romanian, and not a Creole at all. john k 23:54, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
But John, Moldovan speech as a whole is a "creole continuum", from the relatively pure Moldovan dialectal/accented Romanian spoken in rural Moldova, to the heavily Russian-influenced Romanian of Chisinau (and presumably Tiraspol as well, although I have not been able to find any good data on language variation in the Transnistria region). I've cited a few books on this in the article, none of them written by the oh-so-discredited Soviets, and there are a few more books out there on the topic as well. Dyer gives in one of his works a very short list of morphosyntactical differences between Romanian and "Moldovan", perhaps only 2 of these which vary by side of the River Prut (the rest are dialectal differences shared by Rep. Moldova and the Romanian region of Moldova), although to be fair he groups all idiomatic calques from Russian as a single morphosyntactical variation (one example he gives is Mol. "cuvinte slujitoare" -> Rom. "instrumente gramaticale";). Other books I cited here expound on lexicophonological differences between Romanian and Moldovan, loanwords and idiomatic calques in particular, although I haven't read them recently and they're proving difficult to get my hands on. --Node 05:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello, John! Please note the current "Note #2" in the article as well (I acknowledge that the current version of that note is my version, and it's disputed by Node, see article history; Node didn't clarify the reason why he's constantly deleting the latter half of it though): the "minor ortographical difference" itself is a symbolic one, being the result of formal regulations, and not the result of how the language formed and/or evolved. Regarding the accent, you are right, there is a specific accent in Rep. Moldova -- the only hole in using this argument to convince anyone that Moldovan exists as a language is that the accent is uniform across the entire region called Moldavia (see map in that article for a visual cue on why that happens to be so). I'll grant it to Node that in Rep. Moldova they may happen to use more Russian loan words and more frequent code switching with Russian than we do in Romania, but that doesn't change the language, it's a natural effect of the region's history between the 1920's and the 1990's (Romanian deportation+encouraged Russian migration+forced Cyrillic alphabet+forced Russification+Stalin inventing a language). However, that didn't really succeed in creating a language, it just succeeded in making an ethnic injustice. --Gutza 00:17, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course it doesn't change the language. The reason it doesn't change it is because it's a natural effect. Just like the reason why Vietnamese is still so close to other Austo-Asiatic languages, because all of the Chinese loanwords are just a natural effect of the region's history. However, that didn't really succeed in making the language any /different/ -- it just made an ethnic injustice! Oh yes! Taht makes so much sense.
Hopefully you can sense my sarcasm here. You have now granted it to me that in RM they "happen" to use more Russian loanwords. This is a linguistic difference. Sure, it may be the result of an injustice and ethnic strife, but it is a difference nonetheless. A lot of other language change is due to injustices -- Modern English from first the Saxon, and later the Norman, invasions of Britain; Modern Maltese due to the constant political abuse of Malta by the English, Sicilians, etc.; Modern Armenian due to loanwords from possibly unfair influence exerted over Armenia by Persians... just because the circumstances for language change are unjust, does not mean they didn't happen or should be ignored. --Node 05:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course I grant you that in RM they happen to use more Russian loanwords in Romanian. Even more, I'll also grant you that in the Western part of the country they use more Magyar loanwords in Romanian, just like in the South-Eastern part they use more Turkish loanwords in Romanian. I'm only curious why we need to call the Romanian spoken in the Eastern part by a different name, when similar processes with similar effects in the other regions don't call for such a distinction. --Gutza 14:18, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps because this is the term used in all the relevant literature? While many works start out by making a note that "Moldovan" isn't an independent language, they go on to talk about "Moldovan", its Russian and Ukrainian influences, its differences from Romanian, and the like. Some works do not make such a note, and treat it as a separate languge all along. Most of these works are trying to find substance to Soviet claims that Moldovan is a different language. While none of them find huge evidences, they do find interesting differences, in phonology, vocabulary, morphology, and syntax (less differences in morphology and syntax though than in phonology and vocabulary). --Node 00:24, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

So, you're basically saying that

  • "Moldovan" isn't a clear-cut stand-alone language after all;
I never said that. As I've noted countless times before, the division between what is a language and what is not is completely arbitrary. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • However, some works use this term extensively to denote, dissect and discuss whatever language they speak in Rep Moldova;
Yes --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • However, most of these works are politically biased, and while they may make an intersting read, they can't really substantiate the very reason for which they've been written in the first place (that is, to demonstrate that "Moldovan" is indeed a stand-alone language, albeit similar to Romanian);
Politically biased? Where are you getting this crap from? I'm not talking about the ludicrous books written by Soviet linguists! I'm talking about books written between 1980 and 2005 by foreign linguists, mostly Americans. If these are "politically motivated", then Britney Spears' music must be biased against an independent Chechnya. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • However, given that the literature does use the term "Moldovan", then we can prove the language exists simply by citing those works.
Again, what is a language and what is not is a completely arbitrary division. Many people in this discussion are insisting Moldovan can't be a language because it's so close to Romanian... well guess what, that doesn't make ANY difference! Azeri and Turkish are nearly identical, yet they are "different languages", the same with Monagesque and Ligurian, Dari and Farsi, and the "Serbo-Croatian" languages which just a few years ago were all considered the same language. At the same time, many people consider the speeches of Chinese regions to be dialects, the same with speech differences in the Arab world, many languages of Italy and Germany which are completely mutually unintelligible with the official language are considered to be merely dialects. Some people even consider Korean and Palauan as Japanese dialects, even though neither of them is apparently related to Japanese at all! --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Surely you notice the circularity of this argumentation: "I'll prove that X exists by citing books that use the term X in order to prove it exists" -- replace X with "UFO", or "Bigfoot", or "telepathy" -- that's not very consistent and NPOV, is it? --Gutza 20:49, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

See what I said earlier... --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

A couple of points. 1) What is a language and what is not is a largely arbitrary division, but it is not a completely arbitrary one. Calling Palauan and Korean Japanese dialects, even if this has been done (I assume before 1945?), is simply absurd, because the languages are not at all related. Similarly, while people do call the languages spoken in south China dialects of Chinese, nobody calls Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang, etc. etc. "Chinese dialects" - or, if they did, they would be exposed to ridicule, and it would be perfectly fair to say this was an absurd idea, and simply wrong. Same deal if the French started calling Breton a dialect of French, if the Spanish called Basque a Spanish dialect, if Scots Gaelic were called an English dialect, and so forth. There are lines beyond which one cannot pass, at least in the case of calling a completely distinct language a dialect of another language. Whether the same can be said on the other end, I'm not sure, but calling Montenegrin or Bosnian, for instance, a separate language from Serbian seems to be coming pretty close to being ridiculous. What if we called American English and British English separate languages? If a POV warrior came onto wikipedia claiming this, would we have to give a language box for American English separate from the one for English?

2) As to the issue of Moldovan as a dialect continuum, I can't speak to this, since I don't speak Romanian or know very much about how people speak in Chisinau. That being said, you are very distinctly mixing two separate issues into one in order to present a stronger case for Moldovan as a separate language. On the one hand, there is the fact that the Moldovan constitution defines the official language of Moldova (which is identical to the Romanian of Romania, except with a small orthographical difference which seems to be no greater than that of "colour" and "color" between British and American English) as "Moldovan." But this "Moldovan language," which is, again, exactly the same as Romanian, is clearly not a separate language. On the other hand, you have the issue of Russianization of the Romanian/Moldovan spoken in certain parts of Moldova. I will assume that you are correct in your discussions of this phenomenon. But the fact remains that the existence of a Russian/Romanian creole (or, more likely, pidgin) in Chisinau and elsewhere is a separate issue which you are purposefully mixing in with the other to create confusion. The official "Moldovan language" of Moldova is identical to the "Romanian language" of Romania and Serbia & Montenegro (or do we have a "Voijvodinese language" in the latter?) The existence of regional variation is simply not related to this issue. john k 06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to ignore those accusations which I believe to be nonconstructive (ie, me trying to cause confusion in various ways) and focus instead on those that I believe warrant a response. The official Moldovan language of Moldova is not identical to the official language of Romania. As far as lexical differences go, I've only been able to find a few examples, only a couple of which seem to be part of the official language. Some of the differences are orthographical: Moldovan "o date" vs Romanian "odată", Moldovan "Andruşul-de-jos" vs Romanian "Andruşu de jos", Moldovan usage of apostrophes to mark elision where Romanian uses hyphens (ex. "n'a fost" vs "n-a fost"). The official language of Moldova also incorporates the monophthongisation of [îi] before nasal consonsants, while the official language of Romania does not. These are relatively minor differences. Then there is the difference in the usage of "dânsul" in Romania and "dînsul" in Moldova: in Romania, it's considered pretty formal and polite (as opposed to "el"), whereas in the official language of Moldova, it can be considered to be close to or on a functional parity with "el". There are also terminological differences, such as "cuvinte slujitoare" vs "instrumente gramaticale". Syntactical differences also exist, such as "a începe studierea" vs "a începe a studia" (although both are considered correct in both varieties, a strong preference for each one exists). There is also the Moldovan double relative (ex the more Moldovan pe tot ce vreţi vs the more Romanian pe cât vreţi), Moldovan preference for infinitival phrases where Romanian prefers the subjunctive (ex. M: "pentru a învălui" vs R: "să învăluim")... Of course, these are mostly insignificant, but they're certainly about the same as the differences between Croatian and Bosnian.
Whether "Moldovan" is the proper name for the jargon or heavily Russian-influenced Daco-Romanian speech of urban Moldova or not is a matter that has already been decided very firmly by the experts. It is called "Moldovan" (some sources used "Moldavian" during the Soviet era) almost unanimously in the literature.
Whether Moldovan (in the sense of the language of the people, rather than the language of the state) is a dialect, a language, or something else is controversial and there are many differing opinions. Many experts seem to give it the "benefit of the doubt" and refer to it as an independent language for a mixture of sociopolitical reasons and actual linguistic differences, while others prefer to consider it a dialect or regional variety of Romanian.
D. L. Dyer, an expert in the subject (an American, so not apparently biased towards either side), says "Moldovan language" even when addressing the fact that most Romanians view it as less than such: « Other non-Moldovans—Russians, Ukrainians, Gagauzi, and certain other Romanians—seem largely unaffected by the question of language versus dialect. The majority of [...] Romanians with national loyalty see Moldovans as peasants [...] on the periphery of Romanian society, and [...] the Moldovan language as a degraded, substandard slang which has “broken off” from Romanian. »
Node 07:43, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

As you correctly noted, all the "differences" you list above are not actual differences, but rather preferences, correct within the language in both places (I do acknowledge they exist as preferences, but that doesn't change anything).

You say "Whether "Moldovan" is the proper name for the jargon or heavily Russian-influenced Daco-Romanian speech of urban Moldova or not is a matter that has already been decided very firmly by the experts. It is called "Moldovan" (some sources used "Moldavian" during the Soviet era) almost unanimously in the literature." -- but then again, Moldovan is also the official language of Rep Moldova, not only the "jargon or heavily Russian-influenced Daco-Romanian speech of urban Moldova", regardless of how firmly experts decided they want to talk about the jargon. The experts probably make it clear what they refer to, or maybe it follows logically from the context. But in this context, on Wikipedia talk pages, you seem to swicth between one definition and the other seamlessly, and it's quite confusing. I'm open to suggestions on how to identify what we're talking about, and how to make that clear in the article as well.

"The majority of [...] Romanians with national loyalty see Moldovans as peasants [...] on the periphery of Romanian society, and [...] the Moldovan language as a degraded, substandard slang which has “broken off” from Romanian." -- I want to clarify a couple of aspects regarding the quotation you chose, which clearly tries to make a case against Romanians:

  1. The accuracy of the statement: depends on Dyer's definition of "Romanians with national loyalty" -- if that only includes ultra-nationalists, then the statement is probably correct. But that's "the majority of about 5% of Romanians", which isn't very spectacular. If he means something else, then I wonder what exactly he means, and where his data comes from.
  2. The use of "Moldovan language" in the context: of course he will use "Moldovan language" in this context, because you can't refer to the official language of Rep Moldova by any other name. But that in itself doesn't mean that it isn't the same language, renamed for political reasons, as I and many others, Romanian or otherwise, have stated all along.

--Gutza 11:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and since we're on the topic of differences, it would probably informative for john k to know that a huge chunk of the differences all these theories stand on are basically differences between modern Romanian and the Romanian spoken and written in Romania by the middle of the 20th century. In other words, the literary language they speak in Rep Moldova is almost 100% identical to the literary Romanian frozen in time for one generation. No huge surprise there, considering the historical perspective.

Now, in regard with your nauseating comparison between Romanian/Moldovan and Bosnian/Croatian, you seem to actively try to avoid the social issue: the majority of Romanians don't want Moldova to use or pretend to use a different language than Romanian, and the majority of Moldovans don't want to use or pretend to use a different language than Romanian (note the census data, and several other sources), so basically your views are in minority within the entire region. --Gutza 18:38, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

What Romanians want is 100% irrelevant, and what Moldovans want is partly irrelevant. There are a huge amount of people who think that Sanskrit is the mother of Indo-European languages, an idea from the end of the 19th century which seems to still be popular with the general public. However, this does not make it true, as experts agree it is not true. Similarly, experts refer to "Moldovan". It would, in my view, be difficult to incorporate everything in this article into the article Romanian language, and it would also be more POV than having them as separate articles -- this article makes it clear that many people believe there is no difference. --Node 14:11, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

What Romanians say is indeed less relevant, but it is relevant nonetheless -- not in a positive way, as you probably expect, but rather in a non-negative way: if Romanians said "we don't understand what the hell those guys are saying", then you'd have a stronger case for Moldovan. Alas, we don't. But saying that what Moldovans say is "partly irrelevant" is completely, but completely absurd, given the pillars you've used to build your entire position. Your entire argumentation is based on the fact that Moldovan exists because it is regulated by a body which calls it by that name. If a referendum was held in Moldova, and its results were consistent with the census data, and it was actually acted upon, then where would you be? The very fact that no referendum is held is the reason why so many people call this entire thing a political sham.

Regarding the fact that experts refer to Moldovan, come on! Ethnologue doesn't have a code for it -- it doesn't even have a page on it; the country studies by the Library of Congress say "[...] both Romanian written in the Cyrillic alphabet (that is, "Moldavian") and Russian were the official languages of the Moldavian SSR [...]"; and for God's sake, even the body regulating the Moldovan language, in its linguistics institute doesn't say it deals with the "Moldovan" language! I can provide you with two experts who doesn't take your claims seriously for every expert who supports you -- and then some. But do we really want to get into a spitting contest here? --Gutza 18:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Node, for me, at least, the key issue is that you seem to determined to, as Gutza puts it, move seamlessly between two separate definitions of "Moldovan language," and only to be willing to clearly distinguish them when you are called on it. If the article is to discuss both a) the official written language of Moldova; and b) the Russian-influenced Romance language spoken in urban areas in Moldova as the "Moldovan language," it must be made crystal clear that these are quite separate concepts. I do not know if you intend to create confusion here, and I apologize if in my previous remarks I implied that you were purposefully trying to be confusing, but the fact remains that you are creating confusion, and that you seem to be demanding that this confusion be maintained. I cannot see the value of eliding these two separate meanings of the term "Moldovan language" into one. john k 03:52, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I would disagree with the statement that they're entirely separate from one another. There exists a continuum between the two which varies with formality and situation. The same term is used for both topics in the literature, and sometimes it refers to both of the "different" topics with the same name in each paragraph. Perhaps the main difference can be considered that the purest form of Romanian in Moldova is the written language, which runs contrary to the heavily Slavic-influenced spoken variety (although, as noted before, there is a sociolinguistic continuum, as well as a sort of dialect continuum between urban and rural areas). Also, in Moldova you will find many people (usually over 30) still using Cyrillic to take notes, write reminders, sometimes even friendly letters. Next to nobody (maybe Moldovan migrants) does this in Romania. Not a few books in Moldova can only be found in Cyrillic. --Node 14:11, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Node, you're bringing unrelated arguments, this is becoming absurd. What could possibly be the relevance of Cyrillic-only books and people who write notes in Cyrillic, when we all know the history of the region? We also know that in 30 years time, only senior people will write in Cyrillic if the current situation doesn't worsen -- would that alone change the language of Rep Moldova? Regarding your, again, unrelated discussion about the sociolinguistic/dialect continuum -- yes, there probably are differences between the language spoken in rural areas and the language spoken in urban areas, but then again, we have the same kind of variety within Romania (in the central-eestern part of the country there are areas where you can barely manage without speaking Magyar), and that doesn't stop us from calling the language Romanian. Everything, but absolutely everything you said in the paragraph above is completely unrelated to the topic. Please read the first paragraph of the article: "Moldovan (limba moldovenească), the official language of Moldova" -- that's what the article means by the "Moldovan language", and that's what people expect. If you want to talk about something else, you must either clarify that very distinctly, or create another article. --Gutza 18:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Beginnings of "Moldovan"

Node, what's your problem with that section? You may interpret it as nationalistic, because that's your own bias, but it's freaking true, those are historical facts you can read about in all history books and encyclopedias in the world -- including Wikipedia, in other articles. You may say it has nothing to do here, that could be a possibly valid point, but I think it's only fair to give people a little background on what happened in the region, for a better understanding of the current situation. I can't say I'm sorry that history didn't happen more to your liking, because that would mean Moldova would be undisputed Russian land, which it isn't. But hey, that's what happened, we can't change it now. Forbidding that information being there would be similar to Al Quaeda members opposing the data in Economy of the United States, on account of it being nationalistically biased -- indeed, it looks good for Americans, but it's still true true data, so it's still there.

If you want to contest the accuracy of the data in that section, or the way it is presented, I'd be happy to discuss it. But please don't revert without discussing. --Gutza 18:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Gutza's Claims

Now, I just realized I never made myself really clear regarding this dispute. My basic claim is that Moldovan is not even a dialect of Romanian, but rather a regional variety (not sure about the terminology, IANA linguist), on the same level of difference as the Romanian spoken in Transylvania, Oltenia or Moldavia (similar with the differences between Texan and Californian, for whoever else reads this). The dialects of Romanian are Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian, all of them a world away from Romanian in comparison with the Romanian language spoken in Rep Moldova. Moreover, I claim that spoken Moldovan is basically identicall in all aspects, including accent, with the language spoken in the Romanian part of Moldavia, with the only exception of having more Russian loanwords, and possibly few very non-essential regionalisms. Finally, I claim that the differences in writing between Romanian and the way Moldovan is regulated in Rep Moldova should not be categorized as a difference in spelling, but rather in ortography. A difference in spelling is the one between "color" and "colour", which resulted from the natural evolution of the language; the difference in writing between Moldovan and Romanian is simply an arbitrary matter of how the respective Academies regulated their written forms.

How is "colour" vs "color" any different from "cât" vs "cît"? --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Color vs. colour:

  • evolved naturally in the respective areas;
  • are written consistenly across the regions where they are used;
  • are intrinsically linked to a specific accent.

Cât vs. cît:

  • are the result of arbitary regulations of the respective Academies;
  • are not written consistently in either region;
  • are intrinsically not linked to a specific accent, since they denote the exact same vowel. --Gutza 16:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Now, regarding the actual changes I'd like to see in these articles.

  • I don't have a problem with the existence of this article on Wikipedia.
Good. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't have a problem with objectively noting the fact that there is a regulating body for Moldovan, or that Rep Moldova uses Moldovan as their official language -- those are facts, and I won't contest them.
Great. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • But I resent the fact that we actually use this article to highlight differences between "Moldovan" and Romanian. This I don't find NPOV, because that's playing along with the politically biased books and the infamous dictionary -- if we all agree those present a politically biased POV, then how are we NPOV, writing the same information in regard with Moldovan? I'd like to see that information moved in the Romanian language article, on par with information about the regional influences in the language spoken in the other areas of the region which happens to use Romanian as their mother tongue.
"Politically biased books"? I cited books by experts, none of them "communists", in fact they're all Americans. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Also, I'd like the heading section of the article be a lot more clear on the issue. The average reader who just drops in to browse through the current version of the article can easily miss the fact that Moldovan's very existence as a truly distinct language is disputed, there is no mention of that.
Yes, there is. The entire first section of the article is dedicated to whittling away at whatever claims Moldovan may have as a distinct language, including the quote from Ion Barbuta. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I was talking about the heading section, not about the first section. Specifically, I was talking about "Moldovan is considered by most people to be identical to the Romanian language" -- I'd like to see this reworded to "Moldovan is considered by most people to the Romanian language renamed for political reasons", or something similar. --Gutza 16:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I'd like to see a reasonable resolution in the way we present the census data. Node has already noted that it's kind of silly to say that 1.2 mil speak Moldovan and 2.4 mil speak Romanian, given that they're identical. True, but then it's not really honest to say that 3.6 mil speak Moldovan when 66% of those people explicitly say in the census they speak Romanian. This information can't be presented objectively without re-iterating that Moldovan is actually Romanian -- but I didn't want to write that, fearing that I'd break all communication with Node and start a stupid all-out war.
The way "Moldovan" is used in the literature, it would be accurate to say that it is spoken by the entire population of Moldova (if you are considering "Moldovan" as the full range of Daco-Romanian speech present in Moldova, however if you are considering only the "amalgamated" language, it would just be the population of urban areas). However, this is a dilemma because many of these people declare specifically that their native language is Romanian, while others declare their native language is Moldovan. One possible solution is to say that regardless of what they declare as their native language, most Moldovans can speak and understand both Moldovan and Romanian due to the large degree of mutual intelligibility. --Node 23:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I consider "Moldovan" exactly what it is: the official language of Rep Moldova, and nothing more. Since it's actually Romanian renamed, we can't discuss about Moldovan as being the "amalgamated" language, because that's not how the Moldovan Academy regulates the language -- or is it? We also can't talk about the "large degree of mutual intelligibility", because that's nonsense: speakers of the same language obviously understand each other. Of course, the census itself was biased, asking a trick question, in order to gain legitimacy for "Moldovan" as a distinct language from Romanian. Or maybe you can find a legitimate sense for those options? If you can't either, then maybe we should note this explicitly. --Gutza 16:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Gutza, in this the literature and the experts disagree with you. "Moldovan" is usually used in the literature to describe any of a range of linguistic phenomena involving the Eastern Romance speech which is indigenous to Moldova. This goes from the official language, which is actually based on the speech of Bucharest rather than that of Chisinau, to the Russian/Daco-Romanian jargon used by some residents of urban areas. If you disagree with this, perhaps you should take the experts to task rather than myself? And don't say they're communists or biased or something, because I'm talking here about literature in English and German, not in Russian or Romanian, and it's mostly written by Americans and Western Europeans. --Node 01:52, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

John k and I addressed this in the previous section, please see that thread. However, you didn't address the main issue in your reply, namely how we should find a consensus in presenting the census results. --Gutza 15:12, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

So, let me know what you think. --Gutza 20:49, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Node's Ethnicity

Node, you keep on accusing Romanians of nationalism. That's subjective on your part, and more or less ad hominem -- you take advantage on knowing our ethnicity, and play on it. You're a self-declared Moldovan-born, IIRC. Can you tell us more on the topic of your ethnicity? Don't you think it would be fair if we also knew yours, in the context? Thank you for your honesty. --Gutza 22:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I never claimed to have been born in Moldova, or any other European, Asian, African, or South American country for that matter. I have already discussed this in much more detail than I would have liked on mo.wiki. --Node 05:27, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

To Gutza (regarding the Cyrillic name in the infobox)

Thanks. That's a good compromise. --Chris 22:15, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Whew, great! :-) Wanted to make some more minor changes, but I didn't want you to believe I was trying to pile on this one, so thank you for the confirmation! --Gutza 22:21, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I really have to disagree with that. "formerly" implies that nobody uses it anymore, which isn't true. As Chris noted before, that space is for the native name, which both the Cyrillic and Latin names are.
If you say it's for official name, then one could argue that Cyrillic is official in Transnistria. Bogdan reverted on the grounds that Transnistria is unrecognised, HOWEVER, the government of the Pridniestrian Moldovan Republic excercises full control over all land claimed by Moldova east of the Dniester, regardless of whether or not it is recognised as an independent state. Thus, in that strip of land, Cyrillic is official, because the government which excersizes REAL control over it says so, even if other countries don't recognise it as the government for that land --Node 06:11, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Hrrm, oops. I guess you're right. Now that I have thought about it some more, the article does make it clear on the status of Cyrillic in Moldovan. So the formerly part is superfluous. It makes sense to me now. --Chris S. 09:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Node, you have a disturbing habit of inserting your comments before other people's -- that breaks the page and makes the "other people" look like idiots (Good compromise -- I disagree -- Ah, right -- Whew, great! (most people would think "what the hell is so great, are you stupid?")). Please try to keep the page comments in chronological order, even if that means that your comments end up after other people's, it's just the way it goes, it's not offensive or diminutive to what you want to say.

Back on topic. "Formerly" means that something was, and is no more the case. And that's precisely correct regarding this issue:

  • the fact that there are books in Cyrillic is completely irrelevant, because if they have good libraries, the same books will be available 1000 years from now;
  • the fact that there are people who write in Cyrillic is also irrelevant, because ultra-conservative ethnic Russian kids living in US may well write "English" in Cyrillic, although they are born Americans;
  • the fact that Cyrillic is "official" in a non-official republic is the most absurd argument I ever heard. What kind of legitimacy could a state possibly have to make official acts, when the state itself is not official?

Last but not least, you probably failed to notice that the article opens with the very NPOV "Moldovan (Latin alphabet: limba moldovenească, Cyrillic alphabet: лимба молдовеняскэ)" -- so the information is readily available, in a very proeminent place in the article. The information about the current state of affairs on the other hand is buried in section 1.2 of the article.

Not enough for you, you need the Cyrillic version in the infobox too. Given that the name of the language is presented proeminently in Cyrillic in the very first words of the article heading, I wanted to remove it from the infobox. That's no good, you say. Ok, then I accepted a compromise where we re-iterate the name in Cyrillic in the infobox, but we give some sort of hint to the casual reader that the Cyrillic version is not official anymore ("formerly"). But no, you're not happy with that either, you need to have Cyrillic on exactly the same level with Latin within the article until the last possible place where it must be "accepted" that, well, actually, Cyrillic hasn't been official for the past 16 years! Doesn't 16 years qualify for "formerly"?

Hey, how about we remove Sections 1.2 and 3.1 altogether, and just link somewhere in the references to a page where we state that Cyrillic hasn't been official since 1989? What the hell, let's also remove the link from the references, name the explanatory article "Current status of the Moldovan language", and hope that the casual reader will find it using the Search button -- that would still preserve the same NPOV information, just in a different fashion, right?

Of course I'm aware my proposal is outrageously over the top and nowhere in the same ballpark with Node's position -- but I wanted to show that while the information is "there", and it's accurate, the presentation is important, and the presentation itself can be POV. In my opinion, in the current version of the article, the information is NPOV, but the presentation is POV -- the casual reader must not be led to believe that Latin and Cyrillic scripts are equal in regard with Moldovan, simply because it's not true, regardless of how many books or speakers or unrecognized states use it.

The current version of the first "screen" doesn't give any hint whatsoever that Cyrillic is not official anymore, but rather implies pretty strongly that the language is officially written in dual scripts (much strongly than a simple "formerly" would imply the opposite, since the name in Cyrillic was already obvious and proeminent -- no "formerly X" would be needed if "X" was not used by anyone anywere -- there's no "formerly Dacian" note on the Romanian language article, because it's not needed).

Just for clarification, by "casual reader" I mean the person who finds a link to Moldovan language within Wikipedia and just drops by to get a brief glance in order to get a general idea on what language this is and where it's spoken, as opposed to the actively interested reader, who, I grant you, will go through the history section and reach Section 1.2.

I'm open to suggestions on how to accomplish this goal, since the previous compromise obviously doesn't make everyone happy. --Gutza 00:38, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Again, Gutza, I will say what I have said a few times before. 1) That section is not for the "official" name, but the native name. The Cyrillic name is used by native speakers, and it belongs there. It was "formerly" official in RM, yes, but it is still the "native name" and a daily reality for many people.
2) You seem to think that the inclusion of both in the infobox implies that they are equal. If this is the case, then why is the Cyrillic text in a smaller font? In fact, I don't see how that's logical or NPOV, even though I added it that way, I'm going to make it larger now.
3) "Formerly" indicates something of the past. Moldovan is still called "молдовеняскэ" by some native speakers, and as I noted in my first reiteration, the place in the infobox is for the native name(s), not the official names, if there is a difference.
4) Speaking about what is official and what is not... as I said before, regardless of whether or not anybody RECOGNISES Transnistria, it is a FACT that the Pridnestrian Moldovan Republic excersises FULL CONTROL over all lands claimed by Moldova east of the Dniester, independently of Republica Moldova. Similarly, while nobody recognises the independence of the Guarani farmers in the southern tip of Brazil, they excersise FULL CONTROL over that territory, independently of any claims of the Brazilian government. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Somaliland, Puntland, Taiwan, Tamil Eelam, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Northern Cyprus are similarly unrecognised, but they all excersise FULL CONTROL over some territory, and operate independently of those recognised governments who claim them. Thus, regardless of whether or not it is de jure independent, Cyrillic is the OFFICIAL SCRIPT used to write the Moldovan language in the land which is marked yellow in this image.
--Node 03:49, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

"You seem to think that the inclusion of both in the infobox implies that they are equal. If this is the case, then why is the Cyrillic text in a smaller font? In fact, I don't see how that's logical or NPOV, even though I added it that way, I'm going to make it larger now." -- way to go Node, there's a wonderful example of working towards compromise! "You seem to think X strenghtens my case. If so, then why Y, which in my opinion weakens my case? Right, let's remove Y then!" I'm honestly appalled.

Moldovan has been written in Latin officially for the past 16 years -- a generation of young people have completed their entire education, college included, using Latin script alone. The current version of the article makes no indication whatsoever in that direction for the casual reader, one really needs to go deep into the article to find that out. Furthermore, as explained above, although you're concerned that writing "formerly" before the Cyrillic name might imply something of the past, the lack of any indication whatsoever certainly implies something very much of the present. In other words, if we say "formerly", it's obvious that we're talking about relatively recent events (see my example with "formerly Dacian" in Romanian, which nobody would consider reasonable), whereas if we don't, there is simply no information available at all.

Again, I am open to alternate solutions, but my hope of reaching compromise with you is slowly fading away, after your appalling reaction to my previous comments. --Gutza 12:32, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Cyrillic

Gutza called me over for my two cents. So here it is ..

One of the duties of a linguistics-related article is to describe a language. Linguists call this descriptive linguistics, this is opposed to prescriptive linguistics where people are told how to speak a certain way (this was English class for us Americans, you Romanians probably had a class for your own language). This is what using the "official" name is. It doesn't quite get the reality of the situation with Moldovan's writing systems. Yes, there is the government-sanctioned Latin alphabet, but that's not the whole story.

As an analogy, if for some reason tomorrow that the English-speaking world decided to use the Cyrillic alphabet, it would still be appropriate to list English along with Инглиш. Even after perhaps 15 or 20 years it would still be appropriate. There will still be people who still write and correspond with each other in the Latin script. And that is the case now with Moldovan.

Also, I usually concern myself with the languages of the Philippines. Only my native languages, Tagalog and English, are recognized as the official languages of the Philippines. My grandmother's language, Bikol is not official. Thus there's no "official" way of writing it. Latin script is the de-facto script. So, official is not possible. --Chris S. 02:24, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

PS: I forgot perhaps as another compromise - use a footnote ... and at the bottom of the infobox, explain what script is official and what is not. --Chris S. 02:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Most strangers...

"In Chişinău, most strangers, even ethnic Romanians, address one another in Russian, despite the fact that Moldovan is official." I don't know what this is meant to say:

  • Are ethnic Romanians strangers in RM, even when they are born there?, or
  • Is this about citizens of Romania, who are implied to all speak Russian?

I'd like to rephrase it as to remove ambiguity, but don't know which way to. --Gutza 08:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Is that statement even backed up by evidence? I find it hard to believe that in Chişinău, strangers (that is, people who don't each other) would address each other in Russian first, when asking for directions or whatever else. Ronline 10:54, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Ahhh, yes, stupid me, I was thinking "foreigners" -- your intuition worked right. Yes, in the correct interpretation (people who don't know each other), I hear that's true, most people do actually try Russian first. --Gutza 12:26, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Ronline's interpretation is indeed correct. Although Moldovan/Romanian is the only official language for the entire nation of Moldova (Russian is official in Gagauzia and Transnistria, Turkish is official in Gagauzia, and Ukrainian is official in Trasnistria), there is still some uncertainty as to the direction of language shift: is Russian in decline, or is Romanian in decline? If we are to see Chisinau as an example, then we would surely decide that Romanian is in decline. Strangers will start conversations with Russian. Everything is written in both languages, or sometimes in Russian only, but rarely in Romanian only. Many people only speak Russian but not very many people speak only Romanian. It has been said that requirements for Moldovan language education are a joke -- children in Russian-language schools learn next to no Moldovan, but they meet government education standards. Russian-heritage kids will only learn good Moldovan at school if they go to a Moldovan or Turkish school. --Node 12:08, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course, if we choose to take any other city but Chisinau as an example, or if we choose to take the countryside as an example, or any region in Moldova except Chisinau as an example, we'll reach the opposite conclusion. But then again, this is just FUD, it won't go into the article. --Gutza T T+ 14:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course, Gutza, this is correct, with the possible exception of Gagauzia and (if you count it as a part of Moldova) Transnistria. My point was that it's ironic and unfortunate that the decline of the language in the largest municipality in Moldova continues after independence, despite the fact that Russian is no longer official, and the area is no longer controlled directly by Moscow as it was before. --Node 12:10, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
In addition to that, Chisinau has nearly 18% of the population of Moldova (this doesn't count suburbs). Gagauzia, Transnistria, and Chisinau combined contain nearly 37% of the population of Moldova. In Gagauzia, the vast majority speak only Russian, or Gagauz and Russian. Only very few speak Moldovan/Romanian. --Node 12:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it does seem ironic at first glance -- but it's quite logical if you consider the context. I expect you don't contest the massive Russian "colonisation" of RM. In that context, I can't imagine many Russians leaving for another country (I expect that's what they felt, regardless of whether it was officially part of USSR or not) without some pretty strong incentives. Therefore I can't expect a conversation along these lines: "Go to a small village in an unknown country and work a menial job" -- "Hurrah! Let's all go!". Instead, I expect most of them landed in Chisinau, which explains the current state of affairs.

Since this is not going into the article, I won't go into an argument with you on the merits of your assessment of the situation. But just for the record, in case you interpret silence as agreement. "It has been said that requirements for Moldovan language education are a joke" -- I heard the opposite from Moldovans. "Russian-heritage kids will only learn good Moldovan at school if they go to a Moldovan or Turkish school" -- that's true, but the following is also true: "Russian-heritage kids will only learn good English at school in US if they go to an American school" (as opposed to a Russian school, where they are taught in Russian -- not hugely surprising in either case). Finally, "If we are to see Chisinau as an example, then we would surely decide that Romanian is in decline" -- how is that? In order to decide on a trend, you must judge a trend. But you're only judging the current state of affairs, which is most likely inherited from the USSR days. Do you have any figures showing the evolution of the Russian-speaking population to support your claim about the trend regarding the Romanian decline? --Gutza T T+ 18:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

First of all, yes, I agree about Russian "colonisation" of RM. Yes, it makes sense that most Russians (and Ukrainians and Belarusians) seeking opportunity in Moldova would head to Chisinau, a relatively large city, rather than a small village.
By "requirements for Moldovan language education", I meant what the government requires all schools to teach. Thus, in a Russian school, the Moldovan you learn is only very basic, and not at all useful. What you say about Russian-heritage kids in the US is actually not true -- there are government educational requirements such that to graduate highschool, they must know a certain amount of English, and their schools are expected to teach it to them. Even schools for children of foreigners teach a good deal of English, and due to current anti-immigrant attitudes, there aren't very many such schools (in the 1930s, though, 30% of the schoolchildren in the US went to German schools apparently). I don't have any numbers, but many Moldovan-heritage kids in Chisinau are only speaking their language at home, and some can't even speak it very well, which really upsets some intellectuals. The prevailing attitude among Moldovan-heritage people in Chisinau seems to be along the following lines (said originally by a Moldovan-speaker university student in Chisinau): "If you meet a stranger on the street and say something to him in Moldovan, he may have troubles understanding you so you will have to repeat yourself. Then, you may find out after repeating yourself that even when you speak slowly he won't understand you because his Moldovan is so poor that he doesn't know the words, so you'll have to switch languages. Why go through that, when everybody will understand the first time with Russian?" Such attitudes are usually indicative of language shift. --Node 19:28, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

bilingual code switching

In Romania, instead of using code switching with Russian, like it is in Moldova, it is quite commonly used English. Well, I have a story related to this: some girl used my computer for reading her emails and unfortunatelly, she clicked OK on the browser's question on keeping password. Only later I realized that I had access to a email account of a Moldovan girl. Of course, it would be against my Wooster code of honour to violate someone's correspondence, but, sometimes we have to do it for the advance of science of linguistics. So, I analyzed the contents of some of her emails and was able to divide them in two categories: those that had a Romanian addressee were written in the usual Romanian with English phrases and words, while those that had a Moldovan addressee contained Romanian with Russian phrases and words. I found this rather amusing. :-)

Anonymously yours, 195.212.29.75 07:40, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

From Domnu Goie

What is this 1.1 mil people? A whole article on the Maldabanian language? I am sorry but this is outragous. Ok, well I am gonna make an article on the "Beltsy" language and "Transnistrian/Prednestrovian" langauge. There simply is no Moldovanian langauge and if there is then that is certainly the same as the Romanian language. At most, this article should make a refference to the Romanian language article.Domnu Goie 18:08, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

That's highly absurd. The vast difference between a "Beltsy" language and a Moldovan one is that Beltsy is that there's no literature about a Beltsy language. On the other hand, Moldovan is the official language of a country called Moldova. And you will find literature about "Moldovan".
I am not disputing the fact that Romanian and Moldovan are virtually the same language, and that fact is mentioned in the article, but the fact is that a government recognizes it as a separate language just like we have a Swedish article when it's very similar to Norwegian & Danish. --Chris S. 18:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Please ignore Mr Goie. He is a unionist troll. He popped up first at the Moldovan Wikipedia, demanding its immediate deletion. Eventually, he found his way to the Romanian and English Wikipedias, where he has been nothing but a pain. He has accused me variously of being a KGB agent, an ex-KGB agent, a Smirnovist agent, a Stalinist, a Transnistrian government agent, and of trying to fuck with people's minds. He also likes to spell "Moldovan" and "Moldova" in strange ways, because he thinks it's funny... "Maldabian", "Moldavanian", "Moldabian", "Maldabinanian", etc. He also launched a recent smear campaign against me to attempt to prevent me from remaining sysop on mowiki, by posting outrageous accusations on the user talkpages of various people on enwiki and rowiki (in Romanian, of course), including the aforementioned ones but also that I am anti-Romanian. He also claims I am politically-motivated, yet somehow he is not, even though he and his good friend Duca form an organisation called something like the Society of Unionist Romanians or something dinky like that (I don't remember; it's somewhere at mowiki). Now, I probably should've banned him on the Moldovan Wikipedia a long time ago for personal attacks, vandalism, being a jerk in general, but I was afraid that if I did, he would make a big fuss on Wikipedia-l, and I didn't want to have to explain myself. He also likes to call gay people homos (see Talk:Anti-Romanian discrimination for an example), etc., etc., etc., etc. He also says I don't know any Romanian, despite the fact that I've written two original articles for the Moldovan WP so far (just to try to shut him up about it).
For those who would criticise the existance of this article, you might visit: http://elnoel.chat.ru/others/dictio.html While Goie will probably say something along the lines of "Well, it's a .ru website partly in Russian, so it must be Stalinist propaganda", the fact remains that it gives a long list of examples of Moldovan slang usage, including words from Romanian/Moldovan, Russian, Ukrainian, and possibly Romany, Gagauz, and other languages (I don't know enough Russian or Ukrainian to judge that), along with their translations into Russian. Goie, an ardent anti-Slavicist (he even seems to think that Ukrainians are Russians, a mistake that would offend more than a few Ukrainians), will of course have some witty comeback, but I urge you to pay it no heed. If people stop listening to Goie, perhaps he'll start making good articles instead of trolling on talkpages all the time. --Node 19:09, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

bilingual switching

Please provide the translation of the examples. mikka (t) 23:09, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Which examples? You are not another anti-Romanian are you? damn where do you people pop up? PS: I am sorry if you ment something else and I misunderstood you.Domnu Goie 23:48, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Mikkalai is referring to the examples of code-switching/Moldorussian slang. Since I do not know the meaning of these particular sentences, I may switch them out for different ones instead. --Node 19:13, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

can i propose something?

I think I see where the problem lies. It's in the little green table there. How about this:

1) Under "Spoken in": we put it where it is spoken(essentially all places as romanian) 2)Under "Total speakers": we say 1.1 mil and in brakets we say 26 million if we consider romanian speakers as well. 3)Under "official language": we leave it the way it is.Mihaitza 07:29, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

1) It's ok, if in parentheses. The phenomena discussed later in the article are unique to Moldova, and probably even to Chisinau and its suburbs. 2) Fine. 3) Fine --Node 19:13, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Moldovan language

See http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. This is probably the first case in which politics is used for creating a language version of Wikipedia. Oleg Alexandrov 17:00, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

References

Node_eu, I saw you added at the references section several links to blog entries or free homepages. Within the scope of Wikipedia, they are not valid references, as they are not reliable sources. See: Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Using online sources:

personal websites, weblogs (blogs), bulletin boards, and Usenet posts are not acceptable as sources

bogdan | Talk 19:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Apostrophe to mark elision

Most other differences in the official written languages are matters of punctuation. This includes, for example, using an apostrophe to mark elision rather than the hyphen used in Romania.

I never seen that being used in any Moldovan official site or any Moldovan newspaper. It may be used occasionally in informal writtings, but that's true in Romania, too. bogdan | Talk 22:44, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, this seems to be limited to Cyrillic (?). You're right

Colloquial

For example, common slang among youngsters even of Romanian heritage uses "crasavic" to mean "beautiful" (from Russian красавец (m)/красавица (f)), where the official written language uses "frumos".

I'm not sure that it is a very common slang. I can find only two hits for the word "krasavitz" on the web (spelled "crasavic" there's none). bogdan | Talk 19:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

http://www.google.com/search?q=krasavitz&lr=lang_ro

Salut Bogdan, this misses a few things: the substitution of letters for numbers (eg krasav4k or kr4savik), the mixed usage of standard and nonstandard orthographies (krasavic), the purposeful substitution of certain letters (krsavek), and such things. However there are certainly words more common than tat. --Node 04:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Still not more than a couple Moldovan results... bogdan | Talk 08:08, 4 October 2005 (UTC)


A more important question about colloquial Moldovan is where information in the corresponding section comes from. I made some changes to the section. We need to find exact phrases used by people in Moldova. I, for one, never heard either "crasavic" or "kak deneok proshel" in Chisinau. Moreover, Russian words, whenever they are used in IM, IRC or anywhere else on the web are transcribed, they are never written in Cyrillic. So I deleted the sentence that stated otherwise. Dmitriid 16:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

"Most people"

Node, please explain your edit:

Linguistically, Moldovan language is identical to Romanian

to

Most people consider Moldovan, in its official form, to be identical to Romanian

Do you dispute the fact that there is a linguistic consensus ? Anyway, using "most people" is against Wikipedia's policy. See: Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms. bogdan | Talk 08:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Please read the page. If Moldovan were truly linguistically identical to Romanian, this page would be a redirect.
This page is here to stay because it is an importan part of the politics of the Republic of Moldova. If you really believe there are language differences, please go and show me one difference from standard Romanian at the official page of Moldova. bogdan | Talk 06:08, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, first of all, this page discusses all meanings of "Moldovan language", which goes BEYOND the official language. This can be seen in the literature with books on "spoken moldovan" or "colloquial moldovan" which describe features not present in the formal written language. Anyhow, given your challenge, I quickly found "înmînat", which is not found in Romanian official language. --Node 02:56, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Păpuşoi/Porumb; Curechi/Varză

Although there are a few dozen notable differences between the official spoken languages in Romania and Moldova, the only ones incorporated into the official written language are lexical differences. The handful of lexemes occuring in official Moldovan but not official Romanian are, however, shared with the Romanian dialect of Moldavia, for example curechi non varza, papusoi non porumb, etc..

Wrong. See:

bogdan | Talk 17:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

It says "official written language". If you search for "cat" vs"cit" at .md, going by your results, a din a would be the official form, which it is not.

The official form is the one used by the state's institutions.bogdan | Talk 06:10, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
That's obvious. What's your point there? --Node 03:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

pîntece = burtă pleşuv/chelbos = chel ţintirim = cimitir pişca = ciupi mamcă/mancă = doică mai = ficat cute = gresie sudoare = năduşeală ciolan = os oghial = plapumă cori = pojar popuşoi = porumb hulub = porumbel rărunchi = rinichi moş = unchi curechi = varză omăt/nea = zăpadă

Those words exist in Romanian, too. They are synonims. Moş and unchi, however, are two different words. Learn the language before opening your mouth! And to see that you don't even dare to sign your post... but we all know who you are ;) --Anittas 00:40, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

No, they are _regionalisms_. You say _mos_ and _unchi_ are different words -- well, in Moldovan dialect, we use _mos_ to mean what you mean by _unchi_. --Node 03:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually, pântece, pleşuv, pişca, cute, sudoare, ciolan, rărunchi, moş and nea are commonly used in standard Romanian.
chelbos, ţintirim, mai (for "ficat") and curechi are commonly used in Transylvania and/or Maramureş, but not in Southern "standard" Romanian.
bogdan | Talk 06:05, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
What is this "standard Romanian" you are talking about? There is no such thing. I'm born and raised in Bucharest, but still I've been eating "harbuz" (i.e. watermelon, or "pepene verde") and "papusoi" for as long as I know, and flea bites were equivalently "piscaturi" or "ciupituri".
Yes, but where are your parents from? Just because you're born in Bucuresti doesn't mean all your speech is Mutenesc. Maybe you refer to flea bites equivalently a piscaturi and ciupituri, but what about root words? --Node 03:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Of course that unlike grammar, there is no "standard" vocabulary, but it's just that some words have a widespread usage. In my family (Bucharest-born father and Dâmboviţa-born mother), I never heard the word harbuz being used. bogdan | Talk</sup> 11:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Also, do mind that none of "sudoare" and "naduseala" are in what you call the "official" language. Instead, it's "transpiratie", which is a neologism from French. In fact, there probably is no such thing as an "official" and regional languages, but different ways of employing a large pool of words. For instance, in (romanian) administration people often try to be as "westernized" as possible, so they use the last neologism. With your family, you probably try to use words that have deeper roots and significations. For instance, I feel "papusoi" as more rustic than "porumb".
"Official" language is based on Graiul muntenesc. You say you feel papusoi as more rustic than porumb. Well in Moldova, it is the regular word, not more rustic, but usual. --Node 03:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Sometimes even regional words are used in idiomatic expressions. For example "ca mortu-n păpuşoi", meaning "to utterly ignore". bogdan | Talk 11:57, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
This is, b.t.w., specific to many languages, and most of all to languages with a long history of use. Of course, there are romanians that use some words I do not know. For instance, on that list I didn't know "oghial". But this is not significative, as (1) we are probably talking about less that 1 word in 1000 in _spoken_ language and (2) there are always straightforward workarounds.
Just because there are "workarounds" doesn't mean it's not a real difference. It's a difference because it's used naturally in speech. --Node 03:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

You don't even speak the language, you n00b. --Anittas 05:19, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

There's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. --Node 04:48, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Near-identical

Node, you said:

Moldovan, in its official form, is near-identical to Romanian.

Show me one actual linguistic difference between Romanian, as used in Romania and Moldovan, as used on the official Moldova's government site. bogdan | Talk 07:02, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Note the "official form". --Node 04:49, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but the official form is absolutely identical to Romanian not "near-identical". bogdan | Talk 05:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
No, there are orthographic differences between the official forms of Romanian and Moldovan. Although many have tried to argue that they are "insignificant", their mere existence means that official written Romanian and official written Moldovan are "nearly identical", rather than "identical", whether or not the differences are truly significant, which is in and of itself a completely subjective judgement although some people seem to have had some troubles recognising that the last time it was discussed. --Node 09:37, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, then let's put it this way: bogdan | Talk 11:45, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Moldovan, in its official form, is near-identical to Romanian, the only difference being a spelling issue.
Well, I agree that it's more or less accurate, but I'm not sure why the detail belongs in the introduction when it's explained much better in the body of the article --Node 08:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC) PS: I'm planning on replacing the example of code-switching/slang/whatever it is. For that reason I'm currently making a list of slang expressions which I think are unique to Moldova. I would, however, like to be sure which ones meet your "approval" before adding any to this page, so I'll post it somewhere else first and give you a link. One issue so far is pronunciation, for example should the final â/î be written as that, or should be be written as ǎ? Or should "pi" be written "pi", or "chi"? --Node 08:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

My source on Grigore Ureche is being refused

Two users disallow me from using the source I have on Grigore Ureche by reverting the article. These users are user:Christopher Sundita and user:Node ue. I have tried to solve the conflict via ANI, RfA, RfM, and most recently, TINMC. A moderator directed me to this talkpage, where I'm supposed to first try and solve the dispute.

Here is the fragment that is being refused by the two users:

"The Moldavian chronicler, Grigore Ureche (1590 - 1647), established in his "Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei" (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia) that Moldavian (Moldovan) and Wallachian (Romanian from Wallachia) are essentially the same language; and that Moldavians and Wallachians share the same ethnicity."

The reasons for this refusion have been changed over time. I will bring them in chronological order, by the name of their author. I will, later, post the sources from where these reasons have been posted.

  • 00:16, October 21, 2005 Node ue (anittas, any sentence which uses "liberated" is not NPOV)

My comments: I never used that word in my fragment, and to this day, his complaint remains a mystery.

  • 18:51, October 21, 2005 Christopher Sundita (rv - two reasons 1 - it's almost 400 years old 2. It's a POV statement 3. you also reverted other things.. Also, please read Wikipedia:Vandalism - what node didn't isn't vandalism. Hardly.)

My comments: Sundita justified the reverting by saying that:

1. the source is too old; and

2. it's a POV statement

A source is allowed to be old. History, one could argue, is old - but that's a matter of perspective. Sundita further claimed that this was Ureche's point of view. Well, as a matter of fact, it was also the view of the Prince of Moldavia at the time; it was also the view of Dimitrie Cantemir; and it was also the view of those Moldavians, including Ioan Cuza, who united Moldavia with Wallachia to create Romania. And it was the point of view of most Moldavians, I would dare to say, until 1994 onward. And, to my great shock, even CIA Factbook shares that POV. See here: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/md.html#People

Ahh, but you're not writing about history. You're making assertions about the present, citing a source from the past. Languages are dynamic. Thus, you cannot cite a source from 2000 years ago that says "Latin is spoken throught the Roman Empire" for justification to say in Latin that "According to Historia Linguae Latinae, written by well-known Roman scholar Puellus Ciceronius Illegitimus Palestinae, the Latin language is spoken throught the Roman Empire". It's OK to say that "...the Latin language was spoken throught the Roman Empire when he wrote the book."

But enough of POVs. Let it be known that Ureche was a scholar who identified foreign sources that also, to our greatest scandal on this Wiki, shared that POV; mostly, Polish and Hungarian sources.

I'm guessing that these marvellous sources are from 400 years ago as well? 400 years ago, all sources would say that the Dutch and the Afrikaners spoke the same language; however this is no longer the case.
  • (cur) (last) 01:45, October 23, 2005 Node ue ("liberated" is not neutral language.)

My comments: Node's mystery intensifies and we might have to archive his comments on a seperate page. We should name it: The X Files.

  • 22:35, October 23, 2005 Node ue (no explanation of revert; again, "liberated" is a non-neutral term, and your source is centuries old)

My comments: Who is creating that subpage?

The "liberated" was a mistake on my part, though you should know where it comes from if you've been keeping up with changes to this article. In fact I'm pretty sure you added it yourself. However it still stands that you are incorrectly using a centuries-old source.
  • 23:09, October 23, 2005 Christopher Sundita m (rv - the source is 400 years old, as I said. Languages change in that amount of time. Find a more recent, credible source. Thank you.)

My comments: Sundita repeats the age of the source and concludes that in this amount of time, languages can change. This is irrelevant. Let languages change whenever they want - I should still have the right to post a source. And if Sundita wants a more recent source, he can check CIA Factbook. Or, he can consult Encyclopedia Britannica:

You have no such right. Your right is to use reliable sources. Chris and I both believe that linguistic information from a >400-year-old source cannot be reliably applied to the present day.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-42814?query=moldovan&ct=eb

During the Soviet period the Moldavian language (as it was then called) was written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Soviet scholars, mainly for political reasons, insisted that this language was an independent Romance language that was distinct from Romanian. In fact the differences between the two languages are of little significance and are confined to phonetics and vocabulary. In 1989 the script of the Moldovan language was changed to Roman; thereupon began a heated debate over whether the language should be called Romanian or Moldovan.

Actually, the language has always been called the same thing in Russian (moldavschii iazic) and Moldovan (limba moldoveneasca), it's only the English name which changed. This article was obviously not written by a linguist because differences of phonetics and vocabulary are what separate Danish and Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese, etc, because their grammar is the same. Any linguist would agree that such differences are really very significant.

Or, Sundita could consult BBC!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/3038982.stm

Two-thirds of Moldovans are of Romanian descent, the languages are virtually identical and the two countries share a common cultural heritage.

Notice the "virtually identical". Also, remind me how BBC is a reliable source on linguistic matters? It is a news organisation, not a group of linguists.

Can we use those fresh and credible sources in the article, Sundita?

  • 05:44, October 24, 2005 Christopher Sundita m (rv. It is not a reliable source. Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources)

My comments: Sundita now says that the source is not reliable. May I ask why? I think the source is very reliable. As I said: the scholar researched the history of Moldova and its language, and of course, he noticed that Moldovan and Wallachian was essentially the same language, and so he drew that conclusion - the same conclusion that the rest agreed upon and the same conclusion that CIA, BBC, Britannica, and god knows how many other sources, agree upon. Wikipedia is the only exception.

Again, read Wikipedia:Reliable sources. You say that Wikipedia is the only exception; however I have already cited heaps of sources much more recent than yours which agree with me that Moldovan is a language.

Those reasons have been given by the two friends on the edit history of this page. It can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Moldovan_language&curid=226999&action=history

But the fun doesn't end here. At RfM, where I presented my case, Sundita came up with the same reasons, [but just a bit different in their approach]:

  • "Well, I am one of the users with whom Anittas is in a dispute with. I am not sure he understands the concept of language change. Language is dynamic; it changes every day. In 400 years, a language has certainly undergone some changes. I am not disputing Ureche's opinion at all for it may have been very applicable then. However, it is misleading to say that it applies now. Take a look at Afrikaans. One could argue that back then it was essentially the same as Dutch. But in the 400 years since then, this is no longer the case. They are different now. Yes, they are very similar, but they each have their own vocabulary, grammar, and phonology. On another note, Grigore was not a linguist who studied the languages. For a linguistics article, it would make more sense to quote what the consensus of linguists around the world have to say, based on linguistic research. Thank you"

My comments: Sundita is now no longer disputing Ureche's opinion. It's just that languages can change a lot under 400 years. I have already responded to this opinion, but Sundita then says that he's interested in knowing what linguists around the world have to say about this. Fine! Let's ask them!

Nobody ever disputed whether Ureche was a reliable person, or whether his opinion was invalid. What is now and has always been disputed is the way you're applying a 400-year-old source to the situation of the current day, which although it may be acceptable in some fields, is usually not in linguistics. 100 years old, yes. 200 years old, maybe. But anything beyond that, linguists will usually only use to refer to the historical, not the present, situation of a language.

Let's ask the INSTITUTE OF LINGUISTICS of Moldova. This is what they call their language:

"In the field of dialectology and linguistic geography, the cartography of the materials was continued, aimed at compiling a linguistic atlas showing the territorial distribution of lexical units peculiar to the Romanian spoken between the Pruth and the Dniester, the same as in more remote zones."

http://www.asm.md/institute/lingvist/index_en.htm

As you of all people should know, "Romanian" is often used as a general term to refer to all East Romance languages, including for example Moglenitic, Macedoromance, and Istroromance varieties, all of which are decidedly different languages from that language spoken in most of Romania. In fact, in much of the literature, the individual languages are each referred to simply as "Romanian" to distinguish them from other languages of the region (Greek, Croatian, Venet, Ukrainian, Gagauz, etc). And that page really works against you because it places an emphasis on features peculiar to Moldovan, ie "the Romanian spoken between the Prut and the Dniester".

My comments: Republic of Moldova lies between the Prut and the Dniester, and as you can clearly read from the text, they call their language for Romanian. You may read the full article.

More examples: http://www.asm.md/institute/litfolc/index_en.htm

Some scholars even wrote books about this dispute; one of them is American scholar Donald Leroy Dyer who wrote "The Romanian Dialect of Moldova: A Study in Language and Politics". His CV: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/modern_languages/Dyer.html

Dyer also has books which refer to it as Moldavian language, Moldovan language, Moldavskii yaz`k... Please, actually read some of his books before using them as sources. The conclusion one can draw from most of them is that he believes that Moldovan and Romanian are closely related but separate varieties. He has no consistent use of either the term "language" or "dialect", this varies from article to article, sometimes chapter to chapter, or even within the same sentence.

You can buy his book on Amazon.

If Ureche is not good enough, then perhaps the popular opinion of linguistics is good enough? But why should I have their permission to use a source? I want to hear their argument. You can await further excuses made by the two fellows, but know that neither of them speak either Romanian, or this Moldovan language that was given birth in 1994 - because before that year, the language was called Romanian.

No, the language has been known as Moldovan universally since the 40s or so, and prior to that some sources call it one thing while the others call it another, largely depending on their political alliances. The language spoken between the Prut and the Dniester was called "Moldovan" in 1980, as I have books from that year which call it that... so how can it be that it was called "Romanian" before then? Now, you have continued to say that I don't speak Romanian. I do. Next time you say it, give it alongside solid proof, because otherwise it's a worthless accusation. Also, your citation of Language Hat is absolutely worthless, as he is not an expert.

Thank you! --Anittas 23:51, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

You also seem to have some problems with paranoia -- so far, you have insisted in dividing everybody here up into "us" and "them" -- "us" being Romanians, "them" being Russians. You have accused Romanians of being Russians so many times now just because of their opinion that it is getting quite irritating. I'm not Russian, never been to Russia, don't speak Russian, don't have any Russian ancestors, in fact I don't think I even have any Russian friends. You seem to've assumed that just b/c Serhio Dudnic speaks Russian that he must be a Russian -- well, apparently all people in Chisinau are Russians, because even those who claim to be "Romanians" speak Russian.
Your analogy about the Roman Empire is not logical. Ureche was not speaking about a different language, but about his own language: the Moldovan language. You lied on a moderator's page about me. And before people say that I shouldn't accuse him of lying, let me first say that it can be verified.
Uhh... in my analogy, too, the author was writing about his own language. The key to the analogy was time, not place. The heart of this situation is that you are trying to use a 400-year-old source to talk about the present situation, and that is not acceptable. And your accusations of me lying are not only bs, but irrelevant.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Durin#Revert_conflict

I gave him a chance. Also, I don't care what Russians call our language. Remember, I'm Moldavian, too, and we sometimes also say that we speak on Moldavian, but that refers to the regional accent. In all sources, but the Russian one, Moldovan is acknowledged to be the same as Romanian. But you don't speak either, so how could you know? Either way, all of this is irrelevant. The article is about the Moldovan language and I have the right to cite a source that is relevant to its topic. --Anittas 05:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

We're talking about Moldovan, the language of Republic Moldova (fmr. Bessarabia), not Moldavian, the dialect of Moldavia in Romania.

Addentum: this is what it says about American linguistic Dyer:

Donald L. Dyer, AM'82, PhD'90, The Romanian Dialect of Moldova: A Study in Language and Politics (Edwin Mellen Press). Dyer examines the history of Soviet language policy in Moldova, where Soviet linguists attempted to create an independent literary language called "Moldavian." He focuses on the dialectal features of Moldovan Romanian and the relationship between the Romanian of Moldova and other regional languages.

And you say that he supports your ideas and then tell me to read his books? Thanks for the laugh, dude! http://magazine.uchicago.edu/9912/class-notes/books_ling.html

--Anittas 05:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

This gives the opinion of the person reviewing the book, not the opinion expressed in the book. I have read Dyer's books, and he gives lots of evidence of how Moldovan is a separate language. You have read 0.

I don't believe you've read that book. By reading your profile, you're Mr. Encyclopedia yourself. You know full well that Moldavia is the designition to refer to Romanian Moldova. The same is the same for both regions. And yes, it is irrelevant to call you a liar, but you were the one to bring up the off-topic remarks - not I. You should have stuck to the topic, not your personal problems. Anywhere you on the net, you will find that Moldovan is the same language as Romanian, with minor regional differences. Those differences are fewer than the difference between American English and Australian English, for example; but you don't see Australians wanting to make their own language. And I'll rather trust BBC, than some punk kid. --Anittas 12:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, this has gotten to the point where you're not trying to refute my points. You're just saying I'm wrong. I have cited sources which claim Moldovan and Romanian are separate languages, yet you repeatedly choose to ignore them. --Node 00:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I support Anittas' reasonings. --Winnermario 20:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
And who might you be...?
Someone who knows how to tie their shoes and sign their nickname. --Anittas 04:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
How do you know that Winnermario can tie his shoes? --Node 11:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I also support the inclusion of the Ureche source: it is a legitimate historical statement/opinion, and the statement/opinion presented is not demonstratably false at all (rather, the opposite). I've seen many instances of this in Wikipedia, and the usual solution is that X's source is presented in the text, then Y qualifies it and offsets it with his sources. But wholesale censorship is not done in these cases (by the way, I am not supporting Anittas' exact wording nor where it should be placed in the text, but I don't see a legitimate reason why it should not be included in the article as a historical statement). Alexander 007 03:21, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
In response to Sundita's objection that the source is too old (400 years) and not "relevant" to the article, I remind you that the historical background to this issue is very relevant. See Macedonian language for an example of historical background to a present conflict being detailed. I see no legitimate objections. -Alexander 007 05:31, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
The principal problem is that Anittas is not using them as a historical statement, but rather a statement of present situation. If he were to use it as a historical statement, as in "...when so-and-so wrote this book, so-and-so was true", it would be fine. But he is insisting to say "The current situation is __________, as it says in so-and-so's book from 400 years ago". (disclaimer: these are obviously not the exact words. I say this because otherwise Anittas may or may not accuse me of lying and/or misquoting him). --Node 11:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, I can't speak for Anittas, but I would like Grigore Ureche included as an historical source making a statement on the Moldovan speech and ethnicity in his time. Of course, the current situation has to be described according to current sources, but I want to have both historical sources and current sources (most of which are favorable to my position) in the article for the readers' judgment. Alexander 007 11:57, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Users blocked

Users 195.175.37.38, 195.175.37.8, and 202.69.200.15 blocked for 24 hours for persistent insertion of a huge historical piece that says nothing about language. This text belongs to the history of Moldova/Moldavia. Please learn the rules of wikipedia during this time. Please get rid of your paranoia and learn to cooperate. Otherwise you will be blocked indefinitely.

Instead of calling names you have to explain in the talk page why you consider your changes relevant and important. I don't see any particular reason of addition of a huge historical passage that says nothing about language. For example, your "Greater Romania" addition will cause no objections in the History of Romania article (provided it is factually correct). mikka (t) 19:16, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why these anonymous IP's are behaving so frantically. There is nothing to worry about: the only official difference between the written Moldovan language and the written Romanian language is that Moldovan still uses a certain diacritical character for some words, while Romanian now uses a different diacritic. However, before 1992, written Romanian was using the same diacritic for those words that Moldovan is now using. My message to the anonymous IP's: you are sabotaging your own position with your edit techniques, and you are providing 0% benefit. I sometimes even wonder whether these recent anonymous IP's are in fact sockpuppets operated by the Russian side, pretending to be Romanians and making comments like "revertd back you fucking American", which won't exactly be good for PR. Alexander 007 06:26, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
"The Russian side"? If there's a Russian side here, they must be hidden, because I don't see them. I am Moldovan-American, Chris Sundita is Filipino-American. No russians here. --Node 15:14, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
You don't have to be Russian to be on the Russian side, my good boy. Alexander 007 11:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I'm unprotecting. If they continue to unconditionally revert, let me know and I can protect again. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-31 12:24

Cold Water

To throw some cold water on these individuals here who keep throwing the word "language" around: African American Vernacular English is much more different from standard American English than Moldovan is from Romanian (AAVE is grammatically different as well as lexically and phonologically different), but AAVE is termed a dialect. Clearly, there is no science at work here in this Moldovan case, just politics. You can run your mouth all day, but that's the motive behind the Moldovan language. Alexander 007 11:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I won't argue with you. For me, it's a combination of recognizing linguistic and political perspectives. Yes, Romanian and Moldovan are very much the same in many respects. However, they both occupy different points along the dialect continuum. Still, their distances along this particular continuum doesn't affect mutual intelligibility.
With that in mind, this particular dialect continuum extends toward two countries. AFAICT, in Romania, there is a tradition of calling what they speak Romanian. In Moldova, many call it Moldovan. Despite the similarities between the languages, I feel that both of them are justified are calling them languages. I am sure you wouldn't like it if a Moldovan started calling Romanian nothing but a Moldovan dialect. It can go two ways.
To use an analogy, in India and Pakistan there is a language called Panjabi. Its speakers are separated politically by a border, but both claim to speak the same language (though with different scripts). On the other hand, there is Hindi spoken mainly by Hindus and Sikhs and then there is Urdu spoken mainly by Muslims. From a linguistic point of view, they are essentially the same language (called Hindustani) but from a political point of view, they are both called languages. Even India calls Urdu a language, and it is, along with Hindi, the one of almost 2 dozen official languages of India.
Also, I am Filipino. We speak many languages there, and my native language of Tagalog happens to be the official language, much to the dismay of non-Tagalogs. The constitution of the Philippines does not mention Tagalog however, it instead refers to it as Filipino. My personal POV is that Filipino is nothing but a dialect of the Tagalog spoken in the capital city of Manila. Linguistically, this is true; there are no differences between the two. But poltically, there are two languages. So I have to respect the fact that there is a Filipino language, and even a Wikipedia article called Filipino language (which I rarely edit).
Now, I do have a point. If the black people of the United States made their own country and said they speak Ebonics, then we'd have to respect their calling that despite Ebonics being a dialect of American English. So far, this hasn't happened to the varieties of English spoken in Canada, USA, England, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, Australia, etc. So far, they all call it English .. but if one day they call it Canuckian or whatever, then... Personally, if it were my way, I would probably suffix the word (linguistics) to all language articles rather than language, to avoid this hot issue all together. There is a Mandarin (linguistics) article, for example. --Chris S. 00:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
If I understand well, you assert it could be acceptable that the politics can "make" a language. The Western languages (literary language) were culturally created, and they had some human "parents". That was also the case with Romanian language in the 19th century. The Romanian literary style has been dramatically altered in RSS Moldova, after 1944. The great Soviet Union gave birth in its labs of a new language, making a mutation of style and adding some lexical implants to the Romanian. Since 1991, the Moldovan mutant language is an orphan child. It can not be "developed" in the absence of the Soviet Union. Do you know a similar language (dialect)? --Vasile 00:47, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

New disscusion on the first paragraph: Romanian language in Moldova?

The following lines are very accurate:

Moldovan, in its official form, is identical to Romanian, the official language of Romania and most people in the Republic of Moldova refer to the language most commonly as simply Romanian; according to latest Moldovan census, about 1.2 million (roughly 33%) people in Moldova (excluding Transnistria) declared "Moldovan" as their native language, while the rest considered themselves Romanian speakers. The Moldavian chronicler, Grigore Ureche (1590 - 1647), established in his "Letopiseţul Ţării Moldovei" (The Chronicles of the land of Moldavia) that Moldavian (Moldovan) and Wallachian (Romanian from Wallachia) are essentially the same language; and that Moldavians and Wallachians share the same ethnicity.
This is very accurate, who argues this?
I argue it. If you continue this, someone will protect the page again. --Node 07:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

true story of Romanian/Moldovan language

Moldovan is identical to Romanian language.

Language - Comparison with Romanian

The following text is given for comparison in so called Moldovan and in Romanian, with an English translation. The English translation is only provided as a guide to the meaning, with an attempt to keep the word order as close to the original as possible.

so called Moldovan Romanian English
Vocala este un sunet din vorbirea omului, făcut cu trecerea sonoră, liberă şi fără piedică, a vântului prin canalul sonor (compus din coardele vocale şi întreaga gură) sau un semn grafic care reprezintă un atare sunet. Vocala este un sunet din vorbirea omului, făcut cu trecerea sonoră, liberă şi fără piedică, a vântului prin canalul sonor (compus din coardele vocale şi întreaga gură) sau un semn grafic care reprezintă un atare sunet. The vowel is a sound in human speech, made by the sonorous, free and unhindered passing of the air through the sound channel (composed of the vocal chords and the whole mouth) or a graphic symbol corresponding to that sound.
Aşa bunăoară, avem şase vocale ce se fac cu vântul ce trece prin gură, unde limba poate să se afle într-un loc sau altul şi buzele pot să stea deschise un soi sau altul. Aşa bunăoară, avem şase vocale ce se fac cu vântul ce trece prin gură, unde limba poate să se afle într-un loc sau altul şi buzele pot să stea deschise un soi sau altul. This way, we have six vowels that are produced by the air passing through the mouth, where the tongue can be in one place or another and the lips can be opened in one way or another.
Vocalele pot să fie pronunţate singure sau împreună cu semivocale sau consoane. Vocalele pot să fie pronunţate singure sau împreună cu semivocale sau consoane. The vowels can be pronounced alone or together with semivowels or consonants.

As was presented above both "languages" are identical. It was proved that there is only one language: romanian. 21.55,4.Nov.2005

You proved only that you can cut and paste two copies of the same text and format nicely. mikka (t) 00:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Indeed. This is complete crap. First of all, "vântul" is not present in Moldovan, it's "vîntul". Second of all, this is written in formal Moldovan, not the kind real people speak every day, which is quite different to Romanian than this. --Node 07:11, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, formal Moldovan, that is the language that the Moldovan Academy of Sciences is regulating. This is the subject of the article, if I'm not mistaken.
To Mikkalai: Indeed, aside from the spelling problem described by Node, there is no other error. It really is cut-and-paste. This is why the discussions on this page are so heated. If you are not familiar with at least one of the languages, you should start learning it, and then you will see that you can speak the other language. Note that I'm not talking here about Moldovan identity, which is an entirely different question -- I think this is what we should argue about User:Dpotop.

Actually, what you say is crap. Â and Î stand for the same pronouncation. We used to write with Î, as well, but our scholars changed it back to how it once was in the 19th century. However, some people still write with Î in the middle of the sentences. And the real Moldovan, as you call it, is just an accent. Most of that accent is very strongly influenced by Russian, and this influence took place in the recent 20th century, under the Russian occupation. You can bring a Chinese guy to speak Romanian. Even if he speaks the language with a strong Chinese accent, it's still Romanian. --Anittas 12:12, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The example is crap for one simple reason: I have all reasons to believe that the phrase is written by a Romanophile. I am 100% sure that in Soviet times a Soviet linguist would have written the text in a completely different way. If a sufficient number of Chinese will speak Romanian under Romanian occupation, there is no reason not to recognize a separate Chimanian language or at least a dialect.

Eh. Reminds me of an old joke (I hope it's a joke..) on how are things translated in Romanian vs. 'Moldavian' (the Moldavian versions use some archaism less used in today's Romanian):

I genuinely don't understand what all this fuss is about. The article says prominently that Romanian and Moldavian are nearly-idedntical and the distinction in mainly political. Officially it is a "lanuguage," although most linguists would say it is rather a dialect. The fact that they are mutually intelligible is immaterial. In the same way, there are attempts among Russian nationalists to "prove" that belarussian and ukrainian language are dialects of Russian. These opinions are rightfully seen as Russian imperialism, and just the same, what is happening here has the ultimate goal to prove that Moldovans have no right for national identity. mikka (t)

Of course you don't understand, the issues are quite complicated even for Moldovan and Romanian natives. There are several issues here:
The real problem is here "Moldovan identity", and not "Moldovan language". And even more precisely, the "historic right" to existence of Moldova, as opposed to unification with Romania. What people seem to miss here is that a people needs no justification for considering itself an independent nation. Nationality is not objective, but a matter of feeling, of choice. This is why Austrians speak German, but still remain Austrian. If some Moldovans do not feel Romanian, then no one should force them say the contrary. Conversely, it is stupid to force the 2/3 of the Moldovans that declare themselves Romanian to learn the "Moldovan language".
The easiest criterion to identify a "nation" has historically been the language. This is why defenders of Moldovan are desperate to prove that Moldovan is not Romanian, and pro-unionists to prove that Moldovan=Romanian.
My view: The Moldovan language and Moldovan nation have been created by the Soviets, after 1945. Before that, the Romanian language and nation was one, and you should be aware that the most important contributions to the formalization of Romanian were moldovans (from the historic principality of Moldavia). This is the reason many see "Moldavian language" as a product of Russian and Soviet imperialism, and reject/hate it as such (just as you do).
Now, I'm Romanian, I've been to Chisinau (for I have relatives there), and I can say that Chisinau colloquial language has a strong russian accent and russian loanwords. At the same time, one of the most beautiful Romanian I have ever heard were the peasants in the fruit market. :) So, I think that a Moldovan identity, if it exists, will have to be founded on something else than language. For instance on the soviet influence, which changed the people much more than in Romania. People there suffered a lot more and maybe they emerged different. User:Dpotop
More fundamentally, you should be aware that national problems are more frequent in former colonial possesions, and in successor states that appear after the dissolution of empires. And you should also be aware that de-colonization is not yet completed in the Republic of Moldova, given that imperial troops (the 14th Russian Army) still remain, fuelling national unrest.
Of course I do understand. I also understand that in the current aricle the war is waged by forbidden means. Among the main rules is wikipedia:No original research. I am repeating again and again: the article prominently says that the languages are nearly identical. Similar situations exist in many other places, where language distiction or identity is a political matter. We cannot provide "proofs" that languages are the same. We must present opinions of reputable experts and arguments provided by these experts that the languages are the same.
The argument that Moldovan nationality was created by Soviets does not hold water at this moment. Hisorically, Romania as a united nation is very young, and (while not being an expert) I may have reasons to think that Moldavans and Wallachians somehow diverged while being politicaly apart. This happens all the time. The articles does not provide arguments that they were and ar the same all the time.
Also, it is very nice to fight a straw man saying "these idiots Soviets tried in vain to prove that Moldavia is a Slavic language". Where are the references? (E.g., names of Soviet linhuists) Where are other Soviet arguments, with proofs that they are false? This being absent, the articles leave the reader with an impression that Soviet imperialism and propaganda are simply replaced by Romanian imperialism and propaganda, especially keeping in mind the behavior of some recent anon editors. mikka (t) 17:08, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Here is a link to a paper by an Italian guy that gives a summary of the Russian and Soviet positions over Bessarabia (that is, on the historic "Republic of Moldova"), Moldova, and the Moldovan language: http://www.csseo.org/Papers/MoldovaDZ.pdf . The paper is a bit funny. It camps on Soviet positions (probably the speciality of the author), but somehow reaches the same conclusions as Romanians do. Something like: I hate to say this, but here are my conclusions. Not very professional, but a good source for russian and soviet bibliographic references, and short enough to be read by people whose main business isn't wikipedia. One funny point you can find in this paper is that the Soviet regime went as fas as to introduce (in 1931) the latin script for Moldovan, as opposed to its post-WWII policy. Just to see how artificial things were. User:Dpotop.


I think at this point is good an article on the "Evolution of the Romanian to "Moldovan" "  Bonaparte  talk & contribs
The problem is that they try to prove that there is no and never been Moldovan language at all. mikka (t) 20:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Sentence

The sentence read:

"...though this is inaccurate, if only in the sense that the Moldovan government officially terms the language Moldovan, not Romanian."

User:Node ue without specifying a reason, removed this clause:

"...if only in the sense that the Moldovan government offically terms the language Moldovan, not Romanian."

Perhaps there is confusion on his part. Let me remind readers that in English, the clause "if only in the sense that" or "if only because" does not preclude or discourage other reasons. See for example this sentence from Edward O. Wilson:

"Man's destiny is to know, if only because societies with knowledge culturally dominate societies that lack it."

-If you want to change the current sentence, figure something out besides a surreptitious deletion. Alexander 007 16:55, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Moldovan slang

This is for Anittas and everybody else who says that colloquial Moldovan of which the article speaks is nothing more than an "accent".

Moldovan_language/List

Also, it's intended as a solution to the problem with "crasavic", which is not very often used as Moldovan, and the example as well.

Ahh, and in response to Alexandru's accusations of surreptitious deletions: that was part of a "mass reversion". It is because there was no single version between the one back to which I reverted and the most recent one before I reverted that I perceived to be POV, fair, factual, or whatever. It does not mean that I am willing to fight to the death over every single section that got reverted. So, while I personally think it is a bit strange to say "if only because", I really don't care much about that particular edit. --Node 19:25, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The rephrasing is fine, and readers should note that most linguistic references agree that Moldovan is not a true separate language at all. And about the mass reversion: I factored it as 50/50, either intentional or an oversight. Dealing with constant, numerous mass reversions in the Demographic history of Macedonia, I've seen how editors with more sense are able to revert selectively: see edit summaries where User:VMORO reverts the edits of User:Miskin but preserves mine during the same reversion. This is for future reference, not this particular sentence. Alexander 007 19:41, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen how different Moldovan is from Romanian: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Moldovan_language&curid=1237811&diff=27756358&oldid=27754034#Language_-_Comparison_with_Romanian

--Anittas 01:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm neither refuting nor affirming what you say, but using one paragraph or sentence to show the difference can be misleading - especially when someone can handpick the words themselves. Unbiased methods must be used.
For example, Tagalog and Ilokano are two very different Philippine languages. Nagluto ka means "you cooked" in both languages. One could conveniently use this example to misleadingly support their claim that Tagalog and Ilokano are the same language. But you need more examples to make sure.
So now, if you want to say "did you already cook the fish that my friend bought" in the two languages, you'd say niluto mo na ba yung isda na binili ng kaibigan ko? in Tagalog and in Ilokano it's linutomon kadi ti ikan a ginatang ti gayyemko?. Do you see the difference? I am not saying that this is the case for Romanian and Moldovan, but you get the idea. Among the many methods is making a Swadesh list and comparing vocabulary. But then you have to take other things into account like phonology, syntax, etc. --Chris S. 04:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

If you go by phonology, you will find several regional differences in all of Romania. Just like you find differences when Irish, Scots, English, American, or Australians speak the English language. As for the syntax, it's the same. --Anittas 05:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

NPOV and fairness

No, I'm not going to re-enter this dispute, since this would mean wasting my time, but just for fun, I'll post a link to how this article should be like, if there were no POV-pushers. There is a consensus in the linguistic world, but it appears that in here POV is misunderstood and opinions are valued as much as the scientific consensus. Have fun with this page. bogdan | Talk 16:09, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/1091/moldovan1qp.png

taken from Price, Glanville. Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe. ISBN 0631220399; Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK; April 2000

Very interesting. For those who bother making a click on the link I will cite:

"The name 'Moldovan language' (in Russian, МОЛДaВCKИЙ ЯЗБIK 'moldavskii iazyk'); in Romanian, limbă moldovenească, or, in Cyrillic characters, ЛИMбЗ MOЛДОBeНЯCKЗ was applied in the Soviet Union, as during earlier periods of Russian occupation of the area in question, to the * Romance language used in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (corresponding more or less to the formerly Romanian territory of Bessarabia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940). In reality, 'Moldavian' is nothing else than the *Romanian language as spoken in Moldavia, i.e. both east of the river Prut in Bessarabia (now the Republic of Moldova) and west of the Prut in that part of the former province that remains as part of Romania. Claims made in the post-Second World War period by the Soviet linguists that 'Moldavian' should be recognized as a distinct Romance language were not taken into seriously by western scholars. Under Soviet domination, the *Cyrillic alphabet was in the use in the Moldavian SSR until the passing of a law on 31 August 1989 (i.e. before the break-up of the Soviet Union) proclaiming Moldavian as the official language of the Republic and the use of Latin script. Apart from a few lexical differences (mainly technical terms borrowed from Russian rather than, as in standard Romanian, from western languages), the written language was thenceforth indistinguishable from that in use in Romania and moves are afoot to harmonize the technical terminology of Moldova with that adopted in Romanian specialized dictionaries. After the Republic of Moldova declared its independence of the Soviet Union in 1991, its Constitution (1994) declared that the official language was limba moldoveneasca 'the Moldavian language'. At the time of writing, moves to have this amended to 'limba română' the Romanian language have not yet succeeded.

Heitmann, K., 1989, Moldauisch. In Holtus, G., Metzeltin, M. and Schmitt, C. (eds), Lexicon der Romanschinen Linguistik, Tübingen, vol 3. 508-21.

GLANVILLE PRICE"  Bonaparte  talk & contribs

1) That is but one reference. In addition, it itself only references one place. Now, that, as opposed to the sources I have cited which claim or support the claim that Moldovan is a separate language, looks rather pathetic. And please look at language -- what is and is not a language is purely subjective. --Node 05:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually what you say looks rather pathetic. Even at the internationally level (officially) is recognized that in Moldova the people speak romanian. Just for your record the US State Dept. (their foreign office), the french ministry of foreign affairs(France), the UK foreign office (UK), the german ministry of foreign affairs (Germany) are stating one think: in Moldova it is spoken romanian. romanian is the official language even if the name is moldovan. For the others motivated "moldovan language" followers please check the links:
  • German Foreign Ministry, Germany
  • US State Department, USA
  • France – Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres
  • UK – Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Others except the Russian are in the same manner. All the western powers refuse the russification attempts. Bonaparte  talk & contribs

1) Remind me what the linguistic authority of those institutions is? Or are their judgements solely political? 2) The report at the US Library of Congress is in no way an official recognition or lack thereof of what language is or isn't spoken in Moldova. I can't say the same for the others, but in the US I know that it would take an act of Congress for it to be the official position of the country, and there have been no Acts of Congress regarding languages in Moldova. 3) The German one says "Landessprache". Well, the "Landessprache" of, say, Sicily is Sicilian, but the _official_ language ("Amtssprache" or "Nationalsprache") is Italian. --Node 21:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

mikka gets angry (formerly "Shame on yor keyboards!")

I am not an expert in the topic, and I decided to verify some statements recently added. To my sorrow, I found that diligence of contributors here is way below acceptable. I am speaking about plain wrong facts from near history, not opinions. Therefore I decided to stay an anti-romanian anti-semitism vandal for a while and I will be removing all new additions presented without references that will look suspicious to me. mikka (t) 07:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

You policy is fundamentally flawed. You should remove all new additions presented without references, period. Just saying "I don't know what I'm talking about but I'm going to remove suspicious things" is plain dumb (sorry for the word, but you should be careful what you write). User:Dpotop
There are some things that people have general consensus about, like in the Four bar linkage article. This is not a scientific paper here, and quite often we just take each others' words for truth. References are enforced only in cases of doubt. In "dead-tree" encyclopedias we take the word of expert who wrote the aricle for truth (with reasonable reservations, of course). In wikipedia the "collective expertise" replaces a single expert (with reasonabe reserations, again) and collective eyeballing is supposed to guarantee correctness. That's how wikipedia works, and in many cases surprisingly well. A huge number of artices passed thru heated nerve-teraring battles until finally settled in the form satisfactory to opposinga sides once they begin to understand that we write here not to satisfy someone's agenda, but to describe facts. Facts are of three types: things, events and published opinions of experts. The first and second third rarely give us troubles, while second ones do, since we know events from descriptions of humans, who can be biased, and in this sense the 2nd category is similar to 3rd. mikka (t) 16:50, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I understand how wikipedia works, but I never added text in an article if I did not feel really good about my scientific sources (in this case history books and articles, as well as a number of linguistics texts). My personal experience is important, too, because it allows me to seize nuances and cut out the propaganda. I would not add something on the, say, hungarian language page, on which I know next to nothing (even though I grew up in neighbouring Romania). And I believe this policy to be the good one, especially for controversed subjects.
A second note: you seem to say that things and events are rarely contestable. Every historian will tell you this is not the case. Or linguist, for that matter. Everything is a matter of POV, which comes down to the expert that commented it, or simply to the press coverage in your country(countries), which is always "biased" in a sense or the other with respect to every other conuntry in the world. What wikipedia is good for, is to give well-intentioned people from different countries a place where they can merge different views in a single one. The problem is that there exist malicious people. Also, some people are very indoctrinated, so that the time they need to accept other ideas is very long. Therefore, the unification process is not always confluent. User:Dpotop.
Sorry, it was a typo (corrected). I meant that things and opinions (i.e., descriptions of opinions) are less contestabe, because they have more possibilities to be directly verified. And of course, this is a simplified desciption of a situation. People have an amazing ability to disagree about anything. What I wanted is to stress that "events" give most trouble, because here we have two intermediate stages: descriptions of immediate eyewitnesses (primary sources), rarely read by non-experts and books by historians (secondary sources), and both stages may give rise to suspicions. mikka (t) 18:11, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

"Moldovan" is indeed identical with Romanian

A Constitution is a system, often codified in a written document, which establishes the rules and principles by which an organization is governed. In the case of nation states, this term refers specifically to a national constitution, which defines its nation's fundamental political principles and establishes the power and duties of each government. So far so good. Let's read the romanian and the moldovan constitution, after all, a constitution is written in the official language of the states, isn't it so?


so called Moldovan Romanian English
TITLUL I: Principii Generale TITLUL I Principii Generale FIRST TITLE: General Principles
Articolul 1

Statul Republica Moldova

 Articol 1 Statul român Article 1 (Romanian/Republic of Moldova State)
(1) Republica Moldova este un stat suveran şi independent, unitar şi indivizibil. (1) România este stat naţional, suveran şi independent, unitar şi indivizibil. (1) Romania/Republic of Moldova is a national, independent, unity and undestructible state.
2) Forma de guvernămînt a statului este republica. (2) Forma de guvernământ a statului român este republica. (2) The form of the guvernment of the state is republic.
(3) Republica Moldova este un stat de drept, democratic, în care demnitatea omului, drepturile şi libertăţile ... (3) România este stat de drept, democratic şi social, în care demnitatea omului, drepturile şi libertăţile ... Romania/Republic of Moldova is a state of low, democratic, in which the human dignity, rights and liberties...
[[1]] [[2]] Links to the official page of Constitution for both countries
  • REMARK: it is very rare to find two constitutions in the world so similar as a structure (chapters, articles), syntax and of course language.  Bonaparte  talk & contribs
    Guess why? mikka (t) 18:13, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
    Also, until it is in the Constitution of a state, it is not "so called Moldovan", it is a fact. If everybody in Moldavia thinks they are romanians, why they don't change the constitution? I guess because not everybody yet, and not even the majority. So please go away with your political attitudes to blogs. 18:18, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Bravo, Bonaparte! Yes, so many coincidences, here. Similar language, similar flag, similar constitution, similar traditions... --Anittas 20:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. Is the truth what you are saying. Sorry Anittas you forgot something... Same people. Bonaparte  talk & contribs
Bonaparte, who are you? All of a sudden, you appear on the scene supporting a nationalist view even more extreme than that of, say, Anittas. You have provided few to no sources, and you seem quite obviously from Romania rather than Moldova.
Now, as regards what this section is actually about. You used the incorrect flag for Moldovan. --63.225.220.81 23:44, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

moldovan a dialect

Contrary to raging romanists, it was recognized in Soviet Union that moldavian is (or based on, or evolved from, etc.) a dialect of Romanian. This was written, e.g., in Great Soviet Encyclopedia (if my memory serves me well). The fact that some overzealous lingusts tried to prove than moldavian is slavic (btw, I don't see any references) says nothing. Much garbage is always being written in all countries at any times, and that was far from being officially supported doctrine.

Once again, a language variety is called language or dialect often by purely political or nationalistic reasons, and no amount of fist waving and shouting can prove or disprove one position or another. The same happens, e.g., with Arvanitic language (I happened to look recently into); some people insist that there is no such thing as Belarusian language. Look at the Balkanization of Yugoslavia, where each mountain seems to declare itself a separate ethnicity, with its own language, and who probably think that Moldovans are crazy morons who struggle to disappear. mikka (t) 21:11, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

You lie. Moldavian is not a dialect of romanian. It is bias what you say. It is so simple: is identical with romanian, you may call it as you wish, as long as this is a fact, isn't it!? Is de-facto identical. Even what you said before about î/â is false. There are newspapers in both countries that are using both systems. See this one from Moldova that uses â as in Romania . The newspaper is called Timpul [[3]]. Anyway look one more time at the example with constitution, the language is identical, you may try as you wish you will not be able to prove something else.  Bonaparte  talk & contribs
Bonaparte, tu eshti koncenii!!!
That's a tough one for Bonaparte: if he recognizes this as an insult, then he will admit that Moldovan is not identical to Romanian, if he will not, then he does not know Moldavian. :-) mikka (t) 00:12, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Indeed :) that was the intention... to force his hand, by using a Moldovan word that you don't hear in Romanian. --Node

To: Romanizators and Originalists

  • Romanizators: И.О. Дическу-Дик, А.П. Дымбул, А.А. Залик, А.А. Николау, Н.Г. Плоештяну, Е.З. Арборе-Ралли, Е.И. Багров, В.П. Попович, Г.И. Старый
  • Originalists: И.И. Бадеев, Г.И. Бучушкан, Л.А. Мадан, И.А. Малай, И.В. Очинский

AFAIK almost all of them were repressed. Are their names remembered? mikka (t) 07:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

While in general wikipedia works fairly well, I am appalled by by the maliciousness with which Node systematically changes various contributions, meaning that the bulk of the effort goes into reverting his vandalism. This takes several forms, from changing a word to change the sense of a sentence, to removing entire pans of text. The latter seem to be very difficult to revert, because it's not a simple rv operation if other contributions came in the meantime. Isn't there any way text can be protected from these abuses? It seems to me that Node is the only "contributor" I find not reasonable, and I saw in the discussion page that I am not alone. I would propose, if possible, that some other user (any other regular contributor to this page) filters his contributions. Is this possible? If not, I would like to file a vandalism report or require some arbitration. Is someone here sustaining a collective action? User:Dpotop

I fully agree with User:Dpotop. The user Node proved so far that his only contributions are his vandalism to delete entire or parts of text. User Node does not even speak or know romanian. I fully agree to file a vandalism report, something must be done in order to stop his vandalism. Bonaparte  talk & contribs
Knowing or not Romanian (or Moldovan) is not an issue here. I am not trying to shut him up, just to compel him to participate into the constructive process that will result into the desired NPOV text. As the official Wikipedia policies state, deletion is not recommendable. Instead, he should try (like I do) to reach a compromise that is compatible with the facts that are mentioned in the article. In my view, Node is maliciously deleting facts in order to influence the POV, which is why I call this vandalism. User:Dpotop
  • He is not deting "facts"; he is deleting an example of cut'n'paste from an unknown source, and I support this deletion. We are not a journal article here to "prove" something by quotations. Even if there is a source, it proves only that there is a certain category of people who print books and newspapers in Moldova in Romanian language and certain wikipedia editors call it "so-called Moldovan". We cannot put linguistic debate into an article. We can only record the presence of this debate. mikka (t) 00:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I find this quite humorous, as I am not the only one who supports these changes. In fact, I think your changes are much more appropriately called "vandalism". Mikkalai seems to support the majority of my changes, Chris Sundita supports nearly all of them. Nobody else here has any real linguistic expertise except for Bogdangiusca, and he hasn't really participated in this debate 100%. Aside from myself, Chris, and Mikka, the vast majority of people editing this page -- Anittas, Dpotop, Bonaparte, that nasty anon -- are Romanian nationalist extremists. This is proven by their edit histories -- anybody who takes a look at Anittas' list of contributions or his talkpage will find loads of controversial edits and reversions bordering on vandalism to pages relating to Romania and Romanians. Now, you say "he should try (like I do) to reach a compromise that is compatible...", this is quite funny as most of your modifications are either unprovable assertions or Romanian nationalist nonsense. The best solution for adding anything to this article is to discuss it on the talkpage first. If somebody instantly deletes something you have added, you're a koncenii (you should know that word since according to you M. and R. are identical!) if you call them a vandal for it. --Node
    Please refrain from personal attacks. Whether someone is nationalist or not is none of anyone's business. Besides, being a nationalist is not always bad. Also, Romanian nationalism lost its nick of time: there was indeed a moment when a unification was possible after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Snegur fucked it up. mikka (t) 00:35, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Mikka, I don't consider "nationalist" to be a personal attack. It is certainly a "label", yes, but for most _nationalists_, they accept the label and are proud of it. Nationalists aren't nessecarily bad people, though they often cause problems on WP articles because they find it difficult to maintain NPOV. If you were referring to me saying "koncenii", please know that it was to prove a point and as a joke, not a serious insult. Besides, is it really a personal attack if the target doesn't know what it means? --Node 07:54, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Let us not play semantic games here as stick purely to the discussion of the merits of the article and arguments, not of political affiliations. I am aware that "nationalist" is not a bad word, but you are sticking a label onto a person, most probably in order to say that his opinions are biased. This is not how wikipedia works. You msut argue against statements, not against editors. mikka (t) 21:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

To those who genuinely don't understand what is this deleted text comparison about: Suppose I put side by side books in English grammar printed in California and in England as a "proof" that there is no such thing as American English. Refusing that Moldavians have their own dialect is simply against any historical common sense. It was only for political reason named "language". mikka (t) 01:53, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

To those who genuinely don't understand what is this. Take the (implied) advice of User:mikkalai and compare the American English and Moldovan language pages. In the first, the very first sentence clearly states that American is a dialect of English. Then, the article gets into specific differences. Now look at the second article in the version not modified by User:Bonaparte (the version which the parent post seems to support). You will see that Moldovan is "a language", "nearly-identical to Romanian", "some different words", "very different colloquial". Well, what does this all mean? How "near-identical" is it? If it's a standalone language (not a dialect) it should be quite different from Romanian, isn't it? If I live in Western Europe or the US, this is what I'd presume on a language I know nothing about. Well, why not giving an example, for the people to see. After all, it's common linguistics practice when comparing related languages. And, if you wouldn't let others do it, do it yourself! It should be easy to find a Moldovan and a Romanian translation of Chechov or Dickens, isn't it. Or, for that matter, give an example from the Moldovan constitution, which defines Moldovan as a language, and compare it with a part of the Romanian constitution. Note that I didn't propose using Moldovan classics (given that all of them are also Romanian classics) in order not to seem biased. :) User:Dpotop
You have good points here. Actually I was thinking of digging out some old text of Pater Noster in both languages or something like that. In my childhood I had a book of a famous romanist, which consisted solely in textual comparison of the same text in all romance languages. Unfortunately I lost it during my wandering over the globe. mikka (t) 21:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Nice to see I'm appreciated by the boss. However, I don't like being patronized. User:Dpotop
I unserstand that your nerves are strained, but this was an expression of agreement. If you don't like when an "anti-romanian anti-semitism vandal" agrees with you, I may refrain from this kind of comments. mikka (t) 04:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I very much agree with your idea about Pater Noster. There are, however, two points. First, what do you mean by "very old"? In the current context, I presume from 1990, when latin script war re-introduced? :) Or are we going to quarrel about transliterating a cyrillic text from 1950? Second, there are two orthodox hierarchies in the Republic of Moldova: One depending on the Russian Patriarchate (which was developed after WWII by moving the Romanian believers into it) and the one depending on the Romanian Patriarchy. Which one do you take? I presume you would take the the one depending on the Russian Patriarchate. This version seems to be at "http://www.mitropolia.md/index_news_rom.htm" (the official site of the church) where "Pater noster" is running in the topmost bar (but without accents or cedillas). It's a perfect Romanian text, even a bit simpler than the one used in Romania (the latter uses some old, rarely used words and expressions). I found a Romanian version at http://www.dindragoste.ro/rugaciuni/rugaciune-6154043.php (not the official one, again without diacritics). Have fun. User:Dpotop
As I have noticed, transliteration is not really an issue in the discussions here. Also, it is quite useful to have several versions, including one . You don't need to arrange them in columns; separate paragraphs are just as good for comparison. mikka (t) 04:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Again related to your comparison with American English: I would give up my request for an example if you accept the following two sentences as a beginning for the article: "Moldovan is the dialect of Romanian spoken in today's Republic of Moldova. Moldovan is defined as a language by the constitution of Moldova, being regulated by the Moldovan Academy of Science". User:Dpotop
It is OK, only the order of sentences: official first. mikka (t)
Agreed, but both informations in the first paragraph. :) User:Dpotop
I also rely on you to protect the text against vandalism. User:Dpotop
Also note that I never denied the existence of Moldovan language (nor wrote "so called Moldovan language"). It obviously exists, if only as defined in the Moldovan constitution. However, when dealing with post-colonial issues, giving a real example, with real text, from a certified source, should be a good idea, shouldn't it. Again: Give the example by yourself. User:Dpotop
I fully agree with User:Dpotop, he has my full support. Anyway I fully agree to file a vandalism report if they continue the malicious vandalism. Bonaparte  talk & contribs

Node, you are not a linguist, either. And stop hating me, please. I'm not a girl! --Anittas 01:50, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Anittas, I don't think gender alone is a valid reason for hating anyone. I, for one, would not say I "hate" you. I would say that I "dislike you with a great passion". Hate is a very strong word. Now, while I may not have a Ph.D in linguistics, I have certainly read a lot about languages and linguistics in general since age 10, while your interests seem to lie more specifically in pop music, and things related to Romania. And, whether or not I am a linguist... since you constantly insist that Romanian and Moldovan are the same, I have but one thing to say to you now: Tu eshti koncenii. Graieshti moldoveneshte, Anittas? --Node 07:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

My interests does not lie in pop music. If you check my main page, you will see that I've only started two articles on music artists. The rest are about history, literature, etc. You are not a linguist and I don't believe you have a Ph.D in anything. You are not more qualified than anyone else. And tell that to your magnificent friend, Sundita. --Anittas 14:09, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

1) "You are not a linguist and I don't believe you have a Ph.D in anything" -- duh. When did I claim otherwise?? 2) "You are not more qualified than anyone else" -- Oh, yes I am. How many different articles have you edited about languages and linguistics? I wrote the article linguistic seperatism, Ryukyuan languages, Japonic languages, Amami language, and many, many, many more. Not only have I edited tons more lang-related articles than have you or your buddies Dpotop and Bonaparte, I'm sure I know much more about it than you. Do you have any idea what glottochronology is? Don't tell me, that's a rhetorical question -- I already know that you don't know it without looking it up, and I do. Do you know where languages such as Ga, Rejang, Sylheti, Nivkh, Bislama, Mirandese, or Syriac are spoken? Do you know the IPA symbol for a voiced dental fricative? What about an unvoiced dental fricative? Do you know what "nominal", "Sapir-Whorf", or "locative" mean in the context of linguistics?? I know all these things, and you don't. You are the weakest link. Goodbye. 3) Whether or not I am a Ph.D or a linguist, one thing is quite certain: tu eshti koncenii. Do you know what that means? I think not, because it is Moldovan, and you don't speak that language my friend. --Node 20:25, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

<insults removed>. Bonaparte and Annitas blocked for 24 hours for continuing exchange of insults. I warned you here. You know the policies. Either you calm down or you will be blocked for good. mikka (t) 21:12, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me a bit weird that User:Node is not blocked, too. After all, he got personal in the first place and never ceased. Please, explain. User:Dpotop
Is that so? Apparently you haven't been part of the ongoing conflict between Myself/Christopher Sundita/Gabix/Dmitriid and Anittas/Alexandru/Goie/Duca/Jeorjika. Anittas, Alexandru, Goie, Duca, and Jeorjika constantly belittled and mocked me rather than discussing the real issues at hand. Now, look at the history of the page. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Moldovan_language&diff=28143975&oldid=28143709 is actually the real reason they were blocked, not any text that's still here. Not only is it filled with personal attacks, but it is extremely abrasive, over-the-top, and doesn't even *mention* a factual argument. --Node 00:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


Vandalism 2

Hello, User:mikkalai. It seems that the compromise reached in the previous section does not hold. Guess why? Because User:Node ue decided to change it. I am now waiting for you to intervene. If not, I belive I have the needed proof to require the intervention of other editors. As you saw, I was really open to discussion, but now I am really bitter. User:Dpotop

Again, for User:mikkalai. I still wait for an explanation onto why User:Node ue has not been blocked along with the other. The decision didn't seem fair, given that he used obscene words (and that he started the fight). This shouldn't have been necessary, but it seems you did not understand what those "moldovan" words mean. They are in fact russian slang in Latin script: http://www.russki-mat.net/e/K.htm . User:Dpotop

User Anittas and  Bonaparte  talk & contribs have been blocked illegal and in the most abusive way by the user Mikkalai. It was outrageous the usage of such a manner! Was not fair at all! Here we bring arguments, facts, examples and you bring only your force argument! We will require the intervention of other editors.  Bonaparte  talk & contribs

For those who want to see why we were blocked please read my text in response to the Kid Node_ue [[4]]:
Well all these are crap. Are all narcisist eulogies in the style of Node ue. We all do know Node ue, don't we? Bonaparte  talk & contribs
It was illegal and abusive to block me and Anittas and it is proved that you don't accept a compromise made here in the talk page!

there is not a State of Transnistria

There exists not a State of Transnistria since is not internationally recognized. It must be accepted a neutral point of view like the OSCE see also the link[[5]]. To state in the first paragraph that the Moldovan Transnistrian Republic exists is too much. There is no republic without a State and officially is not recognized by any country. A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. Recognition of the state's claim to independence by other states, enabling it to enter into international agreements. Anyway the status of the region is still in negotiation. Bonaparte  talk & contribs

Bonaparte, please see de-facto. This argument has been had at this page before, and the text "de-facto independent state" won out over "region". There is no denying that the organs of Transnistrian government, although not recognised internationally, currently excersise complete control over the area of Transnistria. Despite blocades from (the rest of) Moldova, they have continued on independent of the control of the authorities in Chisinau.
Now, PMR has a definite territory, and organised gov't, as well as internal and external sovreignity. It is not internationally recognised as independent from Moldova per se, but it has been recognised on a number of occasions as a political entity with control over the area which operates entirely independently of RM authorities in Chisinau. This is called de-facto recognition -- although the international community does not legally recognise their _claim_ to any territory, much of the international community recognises that, at the moment, they excersise control over that territory, operating independently of any other government. Your stringent requirements define a de-jure independent state, a state whose independence, as well as their territorial claims, are recognised fully by most of the international community ("most of" because for example Guatemala didn't recognise Belize until very recently despite the rest of the international community, Iran does not recognise Israel, etc etc.) --63.225.220.81 00:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
-Obviously, people in Transnistria strongly disagree with Bonaparte. Besides, there is a common expression "unrecognized state", ant there are plenty of them, too, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Unrecognized countries. mikka (t) 00:06, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

You can say that Transnistria is a de-facto independent state. Why do you care, Bonaparte? People still talk about a reunion between Basarabia and Romania, while Transnistria goes to Russia or Ukraine. We don't want that curse. Let them have it. --Anittas 14:11, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Spoken language

I think the "spoken language" section does not belong here. This article is about a "language" spoken by "1.2 million". The vernacular is spoken by most Moldovans and is obviously not identical to the official language. bogdan | Talk 13:11, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. The spoken language is almost universally referred to as "moldoveneshte" or "moldavskii", while the official language is called different things by different ppl (Moldovan, Romanian, Language of State, Our Language...). --Node 19:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
WHAT? The spoken language, unlike the official language is almost always said to be Romanian. We don't care what are the opinions of "some people". We care what the linguists say. You can create a "Romanian language in Moldova" if you want, but I'll ask for each sentence a reference. And we're talking about real references, i.e. from books/articles written by real linguists. bogdan | Talk 21:21, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Everybody calls it "moldoveneshte". Phrases such as "tu eshti koncenii", or "nu ni fa pnevmonie la cap", or "graeshti moldoveneshte?" are uniquely Moldovan, and such speech is called "Moldoveneshte", or "Moldavskii". Sometimes it is known humorously as "moldavschii limba". Now, you find me one real reference by a real linguist which calls this type of speech "Romanian" -- it's certainly anything but. In fact, "koncenii" is a bilingual Moldovanism -- AFAIK it is used in Russian too, but not in Russia, just in Moldova. --Node 23:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
I guess you're right... Interesting! Learn something new everyday. I Googled koncenii and only sites from Moldova (.md) and Russia (.ru) came up; none from Romania (.ro). --Chris S. 04:32, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Which is normal, given that the russian minority in Romania is tiny. Russian slang is probably used on a few Moldovan forums, just like the English f-word is used on Romanian forums due to the influence of American movies. Note that nobody considers the English f-word as a Romanian word, even though so many teenagers use it on web forums. User:Dpotop

Paralell examples.

I am willing to allow paralell examples, given that the following example is used (from Dyer, 1998):

MoldovanImage:FlagOfMoldova.png Romanian English
E sărbătoare azi, nu plînge, mamă! Pot să fac prinsoare pe tot ce vreţi că nimeni pe lume n'a fost mai bucuros de zilele calde şi luminoase ce să aşezara la noi după sărbătorile paştelui ca mine Motl, băiatul lui Peişi-cantorul şi viţelul vecinului, caruia toţi îi zic Meni (acest nume i l-am dat chiar eu). Amîndoi odată am simţit cele dintîi raze mîngîietoare ale soarelui în prima zi caldă de după paşti, amîndoi odată am prins miresmele primelor tirişoare de iarbă verde ce mijeau din pămîntul de curînd dezgolit şi amîndoi odată ne-am tîrît afară din vizuinile noastre ntunecoase, pentru a învălui cu privirea prima dimineaţă alinătoare, caldă şi senină a primăverii...; amndoi la fel am dat buzna din bârlogul negru ca noaptea, n ogradă să cinstim cum se cuvine cea dintâi zi dulce, sclipitoare de primăvară... Azi e sărbătoare, mamă, azi nu se cade să plângi! Pun rămăsag cu voi, pe cât vreţi, ca nimeni pe lumea asta n-a fost atât de fericit în ziua întâia după Paştic—a mine, Motl Peişiul cantorului şi Meni, viţelul vecinului (numele ăsta de Meni, eu i l-am dat!). Amândoi la fel am simţit cele dintâi raze calduţe ale soarelui; amândoi, la fel am adulmecat mireasma celui dintâi fir de iarbă care mijea din pământul abia scuturat de zăpadă; amndoi la fel am dat buzna din bârlogul negru ca noaptea, n ogradă să cinstim cum se cuvine cea dintâi zi dulce, sclipitoare de primăvară... Today's a holiday, mama, please don't cry! I shall bet with you, on as much as you want, that nobody in this world was as happy as me, Motl the cantor's son, and Meni the neighbour's calf (I've given him this name). Both of us felt the same first comfortingly warm rays of sunshine, both of us sensed the fragrance of the first blades of green grass which had appeared from the earth and was just uncovering itself from the snow, both of us crept out of the dark den, into the courtyard to glorify the first comfortably restfully warm and peaceful days of spring...

So, what do you say? Unlike Bonaparte, I used a real source instead of just making it up. And it's not a Russian source either -- they're both from the recent (1998) work of Donald Dyer, an American expert on Eastern Romance languages and politics of Moldova. --Node 20:04, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I say Nay, for what is said there in "Moldovan", could also be said in Romanian. They just use synonyms and other means to express them selves. Look at the first sentence; in Moldovan it says "E sărbătoare azi" and in Romanian it says "Azi e sărbătoare". What a joke! You can say either way, in either language! Nice try, Russian! --Anittas 21:00, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

1) I'm not Russian. I *believe* that you saying that to me is your reason for being blocked. 2) I used a source from an American expert on Eastern Romance languages in 1998. He is not Russian, for sure. 3) Regardless of the "synonyms", one translation has been labled "moldovan" and the other "romanian", both in the original source (translation of The Boy Motl), and the secondary source (Dyer) --Node 23:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Good boy Node. Bring more examples. In this way you will really prove that they are identical. Why you hate us so much? There is no girl here! Nice try, Russian!  Bonaparte  talk & contribs
I'd say that this example proves that they are not identical. You may accuse me of using "science fiction" all you want, but this comes from a credible source with no political links to Russia or Romania. He is certainly not a "Moldovenist" (in fact, he is quite critical of claims that Moldovan is indeed a separate language). And yet, he provides this parallel translation as an example of what is Moldovan and what is Romanian. Now, yes, all the words there are proper in either language, but the semantic ties they have, and the extra senses of the word, is different. --Node 23:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
What is with this "Russian" thing? I'm heavily confused. I was called a Russian in another talk page by Anittas. Does he mean to use this as an insult? Because, I sure don't think it is. Russians are cool. And I like their language. Just as I like Romanians and their language. I'm just finding this very odd, this whole racist against Russians thing. --Chris S. 04:26, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
The above example shows only that the "so called Moldavian" and romanian are identical. Read the constitution first then science fiction. Bonaparte  talk & contribs
Uhh... no. It shows that they are actually quite different.


Yes, both are in perfect Romanian language, saying the same thing, just differently said. Romanian has, like any language some words called synonims. What are you trying to say? That the Romanians use "rămăşag" and the Moldavians "prinsoare" ? Both are commonly used words in Romanian. bogdan | Talk 21:55, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but they have slightly different connotations across the Prut. They are both exact translations of the same Yiddish text, just Moldovans would say it differently than Romanians. --Node 23:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
That is absurd! Translation is interpretation. If you give me and my brother an English text and ask us to translate it to Romanian, we'd end up with different versions. Would that mean that we speak different languages ?
Oh, and BTW, the "Moldovan" and "Romanian" translations don't even have the same meaning. "Moldovan" section has some sentences that have no equivalent in "Romanian". bogdan | Talk 00:12, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
This is the standard justification for such differences in translation. While obviously you and your brother would end up with different versions, I would strongly doubt that the differences would be so huge. Perhaps slightly different choices of words, and minor differences in grammar and syntax. But the differences shouldn't be so sweeping as exhibited here.
As for the alleged "extra sentences", this is another difference in sense. The Moldovan sentences is nessecary to emphasise something which is already emphasised to exactly the correct degree by choice of words in the Romanian version. --Node 03:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Node, the argument you are making here is bullshit. Seriously, you know I don't just get involved into arguments for the sake of arguing, but the Moldovan version of the Yiddish text is written in perfect literary Romanian, it uses no colloquialisms - I, from Transylvania, could understand it perfectly. It is different because of the fact that it uses synonyms and different sentence structures, translated by two different people. Resorting to such arguments to prove that Moldovan and Romanian are different is no different to what the Russians did when they "rebranded" Moldovan as a Slavic language with a Romanian substratum and proclaimed it a separate language. The other thing is - you're confusing the Moldovan dialect and the Moldovan language. The Moldovan language is, in its standard form, nearly identical to Romanian, except for the î/â orthography difference. The fact that spoken Moldovan is more different doesn't prove anything. Spoken Transylvanian is significantly different to Romanian, but does that make it a separate language? In some parts of Cluj county words are used that Bucharesteres wouldn't understand, just as some Moldovans use colloquialisms. But that doesn't justify a separate language as long as there is no standard form. It's all good and well to talk about the differences between Bucharest-Romanian and Spoken Moldovan, as long as that's put into context and isn't used to prove that "Moldovan and Romania are significantly different". Ronline 07:05, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Node, linguistics is supposed to be a science. What you're showing here is a bunch of pseudo-science. As I told you, using this method you could argue that me and my brother speak a different language. It's not valid to be put in our article. bogdan | Talk 10:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Back to the basics.

A citation is a reference to a book, including page number after each fact. This is not necessary in most cases, but in here, as this is a very disputed article. bogdan | Talk 00:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Here are some citations for the disputed facts concerning the official recognition of Romanian by the Moldovan public administration:
Firstly - the article says that "In schools, the language is called Romanian and it is taught with textbooks from Romania." So, to prove the truth of this, two things must be proved: 1) that the language taught in schools is Romanian, 2) that the textbooks are from Romania
My first source to prove this is:
La Scoala Normala "Costache Negri" se afla, pentru un stagiu de perfectionare, un grup de profesori de fizica si de educatie fizica din Basarabia. Timp de o luna de zile acestia se vor familiariza cu procedeele trecerii de la invatamantul de tip informativ la cel formativ, proces care - spun ei - la noi se afla intr-o faza mai avansata. Cu toate acestea, invatamantul moldovean a schimbat deja structura ciclurilor curriculare, in sensul ca, in Republica Moldova, ciclul gimnazial cuprinde clasele V- IX, cel liceal incepand cu clasa a X-a, structura care nu coincide cu cea de la noi. Cum moldovenii studiaza dupa manuale din Romania, schimbarea planurilor de invatamant, a programelor si a manualelor presupune, firesc, si scolirea profesorilor. Cursul de perfectionare se va incheia cu un atestat. Nu se stie insa in ce fel le-ar putea fi folositor, din moment ce cadrele didactice din Republica Moldova nu si-au luat salariile de sase luni... From [6]
This article states that "As Moldovans study from Romanian textbooks, ...", showing that the Moldovan Ministry of Education indeed uses Romanian manuals.
What about books about the history of Moldova? Do they study _that_ from Romanian textbooks? I can believe that the textbooks, and even the ministry of education, *call* the _language_ "Romanian", but I'm still not entirely sure I believe the claim that they use Romanian manuals. Similarly there are untrue claims in some places that say schools in Gaza Strip and West Bank use textbooks saying that Jewish ppl are devils and must be destroyed, often the sources are quite credible, but ultimately the statement is untrue. So I am always cautious with statements about textbooks. --Node 23:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
The other disputed statement related to whether the Ministry of Education calls the language Romanian or Moldovan. There are two statements/facts that prove this:
  • The Ministry of Education's site is written ONLY in Romanian, as can be seen by the Romanian, instead of Moldovan, flag, and the fact that the URL calls the locale "ro" (Romanian)
  • Examenul de evaluare a gradului de cunoaştere a prevederilor Constituţiei Republicii Moldova este susţinut în scris, în limba română sau rusă, pe bază de bilete de examinare. Durata examenului este de 60 de minute. - From [7]
The latter is a law that talks about how one can gain Moldovan citizenship. It states "An exam of evaluation concerning the level of knowledge of the Moldovan Constitution must be sustained in writing, in either the Romanian or Russian languages..."
And yet another source:
Examenele de absolvire a gimnaziului se organizează în scris. La limba şi literatura română, şcoala alolingvă – scris/oral. , from [8]
This means - "The final exams of high school will be in writing. [There will be exams] for the Romanian language and literature, at an (allolingual?) school, in writing and orally."
Additionally, when searching "moldoveneste", "moldoveneasca", etc, on the edu.md site, no results come up.
As to the other disputed statement - "The law that officialized the Moldovan language and the 1989 law that changed the alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin both state that Moldovan is identical to Romanian." I am honestly not sure if that's true or not, I will find out.
Now, I think that, Node, you really need to back up your statements with citations. Personally, I doubt their truth, but I'm not going to hold that against you. It's just strange that you've made two significant statements here that you've never backed up with any sources (the fact that you're Moldovan hasn't been proved - and it can't be - but even if you were, that 1) doesn't give you particularly special authority on the issue, and more importantly 2) you don't live in Moldova now so you wouldn't really know what going on there). But anyway, the two statements are:
  • Some parts of the "Spoken language" section - particularly "In Chişinău, most strangers, even ethnic Romanians, address one another in Russian, despite the fact that Moldovan is official." and the whole section on "creole" and code-switching.
  • In the countryside, many people over 30 — especially peasants — are barely literate at all in Latin, and prefer Cyrillic. - Again, where's the proof for this? Particularly saying "barely literate". I don't know how they're barely literate when you consider that Cyrillic is now never used officially - if they were barely literate, how would they get by - with the public administration, with public life in general?
Thanks, Ronline 07:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Ronline, for the "strangers" and "countryside", please see http://www.east-west-wg.org/cst/cst-mold/a_dia.html as a reference. For code-switching, you may do something as simple as a Google search for "site:.md koncenii" and see how many of the results are in Russian, and how many in Moldovan. Not code-switching so much as different vocabulary, but it is often used in conjunction with code-switching. Besides, code switching occurs in almost all situations where two languages are in contact, especially on such a massive scale. If you want more detailed sources for specifics about Moldovan colloquial language, I can give them. I only know of two online sources, one in Romanian, one in Russian; the rest are books, mostly in Russian but I think some in Romanian as well.
Re: public life and public administration; are all Romanians literate? No... so, Moldovans who only know Cyrillic will deal with the Moldovan gov't, same as if they were illiterate completely. --Node 23:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Why removing some text added by himself (Node ue)?

The text as I see it is 100% of user Node ue and belong to him. He can't attack himself can he? So I say to let on the page, he posted not us, he is "entity made of pure energy", not us. Otherwise I say to vote. Bonaparte  talk & contribs

Anonymous user, Node_ue, Bonaparte...

Anonymous user, Node_ue, Bonaparte... We're getting nowhere.

  1. Anonymous user, stop personal attacks. You're not helping here.
  2. Node_ue, your version is not factually accurate.
  3. Bonaparte, your version is not neutral.

I'm thinking of how to make a version acceptable by both sides, but I think that is a tough job. :-) bogdan | Talk 22:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Bogdan, after the most recent defamatory post, I don't see how this conflict can be resolved peacefully. Before that, some of the arguments were silly and bordering on hurtful sometimes, but at that point I was still willing to forgive. For now, the fate of this article should be put on hold, until the interpersonal conflict has been resolved (most likely via an RfAr or a few RfArs even). Otherwise, it will continue to exacerbate said conflict, and the issues on this page will become even more distorted by the simultaneous interpersonal conflict. --Node 23:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Bonaparte blocked

I am not going to play games here. Bonaparte blocked for one week for escalation of personal engagement after second warning. mikka (t) 22:54, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Mikka, I appreciate this action. However, for such a severe action on his part, I'm going to open an RfAr and cross my fingers for a more severe sanction. --Node 23:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

SMS / IM spelling

In Moldova, there is also a separate, non-official orthography which is often used for IM, chat, SMS, and other such purposes by young people. In it, "ca", "că", "chi", "cî", "cu", "che", and "co" all use "k" rather than "c" or "ch"; official ţ and ş become "tz" and "sh", respectively, and diacritics are left off of ă and î.

The k/sh/tz spelling on SMS / IM / Internet is the same as in Romania, so it's not a Moldovan-only feature. bogdan | Talk 23:18, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Bogdan, in my experience, it is more common in Romania to simply use the letters without diacritics, rather than use the different spellings (k/sh/tz). In addition, words are often spelt as pronounced in such contexts, which is quite often different from in Bucureshti (such as kiatra, kijama, etc). "gi" is sometimes even spelt as "ji" or "dji" even though it doesn't use a diacritic. --Node 23:57, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Women

Well, after this might fighting, I thought we should open a more light-hearted topic so that people can relax a bit. I thought, why not gather all the guys and talk about women! I'll start first. I like women to be natural (not much make-up) and I like them to be feminine, but not submissive. To use an example, I think Angelina Jolie is cool. What about you guys? --Anittas 00:52, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, although this is completely irrelevant to the page, I will respond anyhow for obvious reasons. I, for one, like Ayu, Yanzi, Wax, Jennifer Peña... however, I imagine that if I were actually _attracted_ to women in a great degree, I'd be attracted to Angelina Jolie aswell -- she has very large breasts, and doesn't seem to like clothing very much. --Node 02:21, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
True Moldavians like women, thus, this relates to Moldovan language. I don't like Angelina for her big breasts. In fact, I like the breasts to be medium sized. I like her lips and eyes, and her attitude. She's cool. --Anittas 04:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Denomination

Well, after this fighting, I figured it might help unwind a bit if we all talked a bit about G-d and our common cultural heritage through Judaism. I think we should start with our denominations. I am reform, but non-practicing and really consider myself an atheist. So, are you guys Reform, Conservative, Orthodox...? And what ethnic group? I'm Ashkenazic. --Node 02:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Please cut it, take a break and read what talk pages are for. Chat boards would be a better place for this stuff. mikka (t) 02:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Mikka, I'll catch you up. This is part of Anittas' continued attempts to defame me by asking me why I hate women, what problem I have with women, and things about women in general. I personally do not mind it, and I actually think it's quite funny if a tad ignorant aswell. The root of this is Anittas' contempt for homosexuality. (as you can see, Bonaparte called me a "jew" and a "faggot", both of which are essentially true although I wouldn't say them like that) --Node 03:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
That's the whole point: I am not interested to know this. And what is more important, article talk pages are not intended for this. I guess you did't fopllow my advide above in bold. The best way to deal with offenses is to ignore them. And you have right to remove them from talk pages. Although I usually don't do this: I prefer to keep track how a rude person makes fool of themselves. mikka (t) 04:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Mikka, chill out, dude. It's not cool to be so totalitarian. Node, I just asked a question, that's all. I didn't mention your name, or anything. As for religions, I don't like them - especially organized religion. I'm agnostic. What about you, Mikka? --Anittas 05:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)