Reshat Sabiq's requests for two Tatar orthographic variants

"Reshat Sabiq (Reşat)" tatar.iqtelif.i18n at gmail.com
Wed Apr 4 06:57:46 CEST 2007


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Michael Everson yazmış:
> At 12:48 -0700 2007-03-24, Peter Constable wrote:
>> Content-Language: en-US
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Somebody, please, just pick a date and get on with it. We've got to be
>> able to live with a bit of ambiguity in our lives.
> 
> Is the tag intended for general use for all these languages? In that
> case 1929 would do if we don't want to specify individual dictionaries
> for these.
> 
> This is still messy, and why is Mr Whitehead speaking for Reshat?
> 
> I guess we are getting closer to consensus.
I don't think 1929 is more valid that 1926 or 1927, and i think 1926 or
1927, in that order, are better dates. They might have started burning
books in Arabic script in 1929, and sped up the process, but unless
somebody shows a reference to substantiate 1929, i think it's less valid
than 1926 or 1927.

I spent a lot of time tracing these dates down, but this is a summary of
it, from what i've found:

Turkological Conference:	Baku, 1926

NTA Committee Plena:	Baku, 1927 -> NTA
			Uzbekistan (must be Tashkent), 1928 (January)
	                Qazan, 1928 (December)

Since we are talking about dates, we have to make a judgment on which
one is more significant. In 1926 a decision was made by fairly
representative body to make a switch to Latin alphabet. In 1927, the
alphabet was agreed on
(http://www2.unil.ch/slav/ling/textes/GRANDE-34/Grande34.html), although
disputes mainly on capital letters continued until the 3rd plenum
(Language and Power in the Creation of the Ussr, 1917-1953, p. 131). 2nd
and 3rd plena were mostly follow-up and polishing meetings, despite the
formality-wise significance of capital letters decision.

Take July 4th as an independence day for the U.S. Was there independence
on July 4th 1776? As far as i know there was little more than burnt
houses, and a lot of conflict, although i'm not that good on history of
those events. From what i'm reading, by the end 1776 major cities were
dis-independent, if that's a word.

Based on this analogy, i think the date needs to be 1926 or 1927. I
favor 1926, because it was made by a more representative body, and that
event stands out in comparison to everything else: just like the signing
of the declaration in the example above. I realize that it's not the
same, because in fact a lot of this was coming down from Moscow, and
there might be brow-opening documents on a lot of specifics around those
events, and the strings that were pulled, and possible undisclosed
intentions, but we won't see them for at least 500 years, so we have to
go off of what we have access to.

If you don't agree w/ 1926, my second and last choice is 1927, but i
really lean towards 1926, and i hope 07/04/1776 example is illustrative
in that regard.

Needless to say, taskent1928, or qazan1928 wouldn't qualify as variant
names (>8). I mentioned earlier these choices floating in my head:
1. baku1926
2. nta1926
3. bir1926	("bir" being an abbreviation like "uni")
4. uni1926

I lean towards the 1. choice because:
a. baku is for the most part language neutral, unlike nta, or uni.
b. baku is also more descriptive than bir, which carries some weight for
a historical variant, and might make it easier to interpret.

Other points:
i. nta, or unta, while being perhaps easier identifiable in English, are
abbreviations in a foreign language for all of the languages involved.
For some empathy effect, imaging having a variant tag of janalif, or
bjte, for your own language, the latter based on abbreviation for most
Turkic languages for UNTA. I realize English is the most international
language, but it doesn't add oddity to use and English abbreviation for
an alphabet variant for Turkic languages.
ii. bir beats uni any day for me, for the same reason.

In short, my first two choıces are:
baku1926
baku1927
.

After that, it's all up in the air, although if you have some better
info, shoot.

Thanks,
Reşat.

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