User talk:Gabix
Де ла Википедия ын лимба молдовеняскэ
Hey Gabix,
I can understand why you seem so innocent and why it seems for you that we are just a bunch of nationalist chauvinists (something that Node ue was falsely trying to propagate).
At the same time I admire your efforts in learning the language. It is not an easy language to learn and not many Slavs (outside Romania and Moldova) learn it.
You asked some questions and I feel it is my duty to tell you about the reasons why most Romanians and Romanians in Moldova( I will not use the term Moldovan since it is incorrect) cannot stand their language to be written in Cyrillic.
First of all,
You are right that modern-Romanian-Standard was first written in Cyrillic. However, the first letters in proto-Romanian were written in the VI century and they were written in the Latin script. Moreover, Romanians are descendents from Roman colonists and veteran-soldiers who settled in what is now modern day-Romania and Moldova. So our ancestors not only wrote in the Latin script but they invented it.
What happened with [Moldavia],
Is that it was a principality which lasted from medieval times up to 1859. From the time of its foundation until 1812, Moldova’s borders were from the Carpathians up to the Nistru(Dniester) River. At times Moldovans would assert their control beyond the Nistru but that was rarely the case.
In 1711 Tsar Peter the Great and the Moldovan Prince Dimitrie Cantemir signed a treaty that made the border official on the Nistru River and made the two countries allies against the Turks. Everything was good and dandy up to 1812.
In 1812, the Turks lost a war with the Russians and gave the Russians the eastern part of Moldova from the Pruth up to the Nistru. Now this was rather illegal since Moldova was not a Turkish province but a vassal-state to Turkey.
The other wester half voted about 45 years later to join up with Wallachia and form the modern Romanian state.
Anyways in 1917 there was the Russian Revolution so the eastern part of Moldova ( now called Bessarabia in Russian) had a chance to brake away from the Russian Empire and unite with Romania. That is exactly what it did.
But the Union only lasted about 22 years since Stalin invaded Bessarabia or the modern Republic of Moldova one more time. This time, the Russians undertook a much more severe Russification policy. They deported 200.000 Romanians and another 250.000 Romanians were killed in an artificial famine in 1947. They forced Romanians to call themselves Moldovans and they imprisoned or killed those who didn’t. And worst of all they forced Romanians to write their language in the Cyrillic script. Maybe now you see why we resent the Cyrillic script so much. If it was up to us to decide that we would write in Cyrillic it would have been different but the Cyrillic was forced upon us by an occupying power and those who refused it were persecuted and murdered.
For us to have this Moldovan Wikipedia is really an insult since it is almost like a slap in the face of those that died to defend our language against the invaders and this is why we want it closed down.
I am sorry to have written so much but I hope now you understand it a little better. Mihaitza 22:41, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
- Hi Gabix,
- I advise you to take Mihaitza's comments from where they're comming: a Romanian nationalist who has probably never even been to Chisinau, and certainly not Tiraspol or Bender or any of the smaller Moldovan cities.
- So far, many many many people have commented on this Wikipedia. Most of it has been negative. But how many of them have been Moldovans? Let's list the people who don't like this WP: Mihaitza, Danutz, Duca, Goie, Anittas, Jeorjika, Decius, Landroni, Association of Unionist Romanians... which ones are Moldovan? Only Jeorjika and Landroni. And neither of them is living in Moldova right now. What about the people who like this Wikipedia? Ronline (I think), myself, Vertaler, Dmitriid (he's a bit in-between), OldakQuill... how many of these people are Moldovans? Vertaler and Dmitriid are both Moldovans, both living in Moldova right now as I know.
- So maybe it is a slap in the face to Mihaitza. Too bad for him -- this isn't the Romanian Nationalist Unionist Party Wikipedia... --Node
- Ahh, and as Jeorjika said, most Romanians' views about Moldova seem to be polarised. Some think it's completely Russified, while others think that all Moldovans are patriotic Romanians who want union with Romania. Obviously neither is correct.
- Given that what is currently Moldova was only part of the Romanian nation-state for 22 years, the majority of Moldovans feel little loyalty to Romania. In fact, the majority feel stuck between Romania and Russia (actually Ukraine, but it doesn't seem much different nowadays from Moldova). There is the minority of Moldovans, the intellectual elite, who love Romania and want union, but this is not most people. There is also the minority of Moldovans who yearn for Soviet times and want to go back to the USSR days. But the majority is people who do not want to be part of either nation, and feel that their nation is pushed around by both neighbours. --Node
- That is a view expressed by the communists in Moldova and is somewhat flawed. I would not have put it quite like that. The truth is very fuzzy. I agree with that. Is Mihaitza's argument comming from a Romanian nationalist?
No. Node has a very bad habit of grouping people toghether and generalizing.
I would say that Duca is rather a very hard-core nationalist.
Anittas, Domnu Goie and Mihaitza are much more moderate. Just look at their comments before.
- About your examples of peoples, I don't know if you have noticed, Node ue, but those Moldovans on "your side" are 2 just like the Moldovans on the side that don't like this wikipedia.
- Also the moldovans that are on your side do not reside in Moldova either. In other words there are much more people against then for.
Gabix, the main point is, we Moldovans do not write in Cyrillic. It's really that simple.Jeorjika 06:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
- Jeorjika, you don't live in Moldova. You'd never know if anybody there writes in Cyrillic, because you can't see what happens. Go out to the countryside, find a peasant. Tell him you will give him money if he writes a page or two for you, anything he wants to write, in Limba Noastra. It is very probable that he will write it in Cyrillic. This is because, although most Moldovans know at least a little bit of Latin, there are still thousands who are not as comfortable with Latin as with Cyrillic.
- Regarding Anittas, Goie, and Mihaitza. If you want a list of Romanians on Wikipedia who I see as hard-core nationalists, and those I see as moderates, here goes:
- Moderates are: Romihaitza, Ronline, Danutz, Bogdangiusca, maybe Decius... Mihaitza and Anittas are somewhere in between moderate and nationalist... and Goie and Duca are hard-core Romanian nationalists.
- The way I can tell is that the hard-core nationalists make weird accusations -- Duca and Goie both said I am a KGB agent, or Stalinist; Duca called Dudnic "voronica junior", both made accusations against others on the English WP. Mihaitza and Anittas have said some questionable things, but not so much. Romihaitza, Ronline, Danutz, and Bogdan are all patriotic, to be sure, but I wouldn't call them nationalists -- they are all very level-headed people. --Node ue 08:11, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, so much has been said here. The facts from the history of Moldova presented by Mihaitza are basically known to me (only some details were new — I believed that Moldova was a part of the Turk empire, not a vassal state). I partly understand the fellings of Romanians but unfortunately I still see the things a bit different.
To explain, I'll talk about myself first. I have been (and have seen oher Belarusians) attacked and insulted quite many times by Russians at different Internet forums because of just saying “I'm Belarusian” or just writing with Latin letters. They used to say first: “C'mon, guy, you're Russian”, then: “There are no Belarusians and no Belarusian language — they're just polonized Russians speaking bad, polonized Russian”, and then, finally: “You're motherfucker traitor aiming to undermine the great Russian nation” etc, etc. Sometimes, I was insulted even because I generally write according to the rules without consideration of the notorious reform of 1933 that aimed at russification of our language. This all seemed ridiculous and weird to me. Now, I see Node_ue being attacked and insulted in a very similar fashion just because he says he's Moldovan and he writes in Moldovan.
So, Mihaitza and others, you'll have to realize one fact: now, there are people that consider themselves Moldovans, not Romanians. This may be the result of Stalin's agression, but may be not, but anyway this is a fait accompli. So, they have the full write to be Moldovans and to speak/read/write in Moldovan. And they're free also to choose the alphabet — Latin, Cyrillic or any else (by the way, did the Moldovan/Romanian ever use the Arab script? I failed to find any reference, but maybe, because of the Turk influence...). If this is “a slap in the face”, well, I'm sorry, but you've got no other choice than to reconcile with it.
By the way, from my contacts with Moldovans I can see a clear trend to stressing their national identity. 10 years ago, almost all of them used to say: “We're Romanians and we'll reunited with Romania, it's just a matter of couple of years”. Now, I hear mainly “We're Moldovans”. And if asked about reunification, they give evasive answers, something like: “We are going to join the European Union, and there we'll be together”. I understand that many be not representative enough, but that's what I experience. --Gabix 09:34, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
- Hi Gabix,
- There are a few differences between the situation of Moldovan and the situation of Belarusian.
- First of all, the official Moldovan written language is basically identical to official Romanian language. There are some major pronunciation differences, and there are some regional words, but most of these are shared with the Moldavian region in Romania. What makes Moldovan unique from Romanian language is: Moldovans use simpler language most of the time due to influx of immigrant population which has diluted the language a little. Ukrainians, Russians, Yiddish-speaking people, Gagauzians, Gypsies, and even Belarusians, have always been a significant part of the population in Bessarabia/Moldova, though never the majority. Since these people also have their own languages, Russian and Romanian long competed for currency in the region as languages of interethnic communication. When Bessarabia was united to Romania, it looked for a little while as if it would be Romanian. However, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia not more than a couple of decades later, and Russian quickly won that interethnic status. In the Soviet times, many Romanian/Moldovan-speaking families began the slow process of switching to Russian across generations (I'm sure that, as a Belarusian, you're very familiar with how the Russian language slowly crept into people's homes, and began stealing people's mother language right off their tongues). Anybody who wanted to have a future needed to be able to speak Russian, so it quickly gained currency in urban and suburban Moldova, and a few rural areas especially in Gagauzia (where people were already shifting away from Gagauz). Families living in the cities slowly began to bring Russian into the home, and of course it was almost always used in work.
- Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, that dreadful trend was put to a halt, but it left behind it some strange results, for example: Most Gagauzians speak Russian now. Some speak Gagauz, but only a very small number know much Moldovan. The capital of Moldova, Chisinau, is still largely dominated by Russian. Even though Moldovan is the official language, strangers on the street address each other in Russian, most signs are bilingual (if not in Russian only)... In the suburbs of Chisinau, however, Moldovan and Russian have begun to mix, with people using Russian words when Moldovan ones won't come, for words relating to things like hardware, technology, sex, fashion, and other general things as well. This is sometimes called the "Moldavski limba" (the name itself is a mix of Russian and Romanian words), and to ask someone if they know it in a humourous way you say "Graieshti Moldavski limba?". This Moldorussian slang is unique to Moldova, and cannot be understood by Romanians in Bucureshti, or Russians in Moscow. Many of the Russians words in "Moldavski limba" have changed meaning from the original, and some Romanian words are used in strange ways too. Both also have changed pronunciation (but especially Russian words).
- So linguistically, the only things unique to Moldova are: Gagauz, because the vast majority of Gagauz speakers live in Moldova; A type of the Ukrainian "Surzhyk" (mix of Russian and Ukrainian) which also uses lots of words from Moldovan, used between Ukrainian youth in Moldova; "Moldavski limba"; the spelling teenagers use on SMS (not used in Romania); and the fact that in most libraries, you will still find a lot of books in Romanian/Moldovan written in Cyrillic since most everything published in the language before 1989 uses it (In Romania, you will find none or maybe a handful).
- Node ue 13:40, 10 October 2005 (UTC)