# Slavic Languages Forum - to split or not to split



## GoranBcn

I know that there cannot be a separate forum for each Slavic Language but would it be possible to have at least West, East and South Slavic Languages Fora?

Regards,

Goran


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## Jana337

GoranBcn said:


> I know that there cannot be a separate forum for each Slavic Language but would it be possible to have at least West, East and South Slavic Languages Fora?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Goran


I prefer the current setup since we still have quite a few All Slavic languages threads. And it is kind of nice that (almost) everyone seems to read (almost) all Slavic threads. 

Anyway, each threads has the relevant language in its title. If you are not interested in the West and East Slavic families, it is very easy just not to click on the threads.

Some fragmentation would be desirable if we had more traffic and the threads disappeared from the first page too quickly. But with our 12-15 threads a day, what would be the point?

I hope to hear other from Slavic speakers as well. 

Jana


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## GoranBcn

Jana337 said:


> If you are not interested in the West and East Slavic families, it is very easy just not to click on the threads.



Ahoj Jana, jak se máš? 

I am interested in all three families since I speak and understand a good portion of Russian and some Polish but that was only my suggestion. 

Děkuji 

Goran


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## Jana337

GoranBcn said:


> Ahoj Jan*o*, jak se máš?
> 
> I am interested in all three families since I speak and understand a good portion of Russian and some Polish but that was only my suggestion.
> 
> Děkuji
> 
> Goran


Mám se dobře a doufám, že Ty taky. 

Suggestions are welcome and we can discuss it if you provide some rationale. 

Jana


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## papillon

I have to say, I kind of like the current setup. I find myself reading threads from other Slavic languages (if they are in English or something like that  ), and learning a thing or two. Also, it is quite easy in the current setup to do all-slavic threads, which I think is a big plus. In fact, I even think that the Romance languages miss something by not having a common All Romance forum (though my attempt to suggest one was a big non-starter ).

But wait for more opinions...


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## beclija

I am not a native speaker of any Slavic language, but I'd like to say that I like it too. For one thing, it saves me from looking into to many forums. 

Nije mi nijedan slavenski jezik maternji, ali što se meni tiče sviđa mi se ovako. Kao prvo, ne moram provjeravati toliko foruma.


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## Etcetera

I like the current Slavic Languages Forum. 
Imagine we would like to discuss some feature which is common for *all *Slavic languages. How could we possibly do it with three forums?


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## GoranBcn

Etcetera said:


> I like the current Slavic Languages Forum.
> Imagine we would like to discuss some feature which is common for *all *Slavic languages. How could we possibly do it with three forums?



And if you want to discuss some feature which is common for all *Romance* languages?


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## Etcetera

GoranBcn said:


> And if you want to discuss some feature which is common for all *Romance* languages?


I'll go to the Other Languages Forum. 
But the situation with the Romance languages is slightly different, here we have some separate forums for particular languages, not groups of them.
Besides, I can hardly remember any discussions which would deal with South Slavic languages only, for example. More often, we compare a South Slavis and West Slavic language, for example.


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## Carrie2

Also, I'm sure lots of people (mainly non-native speakers of Slavonic Languages, probably) wouldn't know whether a particular language was East, West or South Slavonic.
Carrie2


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## Etcetera

Carrie2 said:


> Also, I'm sure lots of people (mainly non-native speakers of Slavonic Languages, probably) wouldn't know whether a particular language was East, West or South Slavonic.
> Carrie2


That's a strong argument! 
Let's have mercy on our moderators who would than have to move threads to their right place.


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## Brian P

Etcetera said:


> That's a strong argument!
> Let's have a mercy on our moderators who would than have to move threads to their right place.


 
May I once again make a small correction, Etcetera. It should be, "Let's have mercy" without "a".  I know that articles are a big problem for you Russians as they don't exist in your language.


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## GoranBcn

Carrie2 said:


> Also, I'm sure lots of people (mainly non-native speakers of Slavonic Languages, probably) wouldn't know whether a particular language was East, West or South Slavonic.
> Carrie2



Non-native interested in Slavic languages would know it I guess. If these three fora existed the administrador would probably add the languages that belong to each group.
Anyway maybe it's not a good idea to separate them because there are no enough threads in the Slavic Languages Forum to be separated in three sections.


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## Etcetera

Brian P said:


> May I once again make a small correction, Etcetera. It should be, "Let's have mercy" without "a".  I know that articles are a big problem for you Russians as they don't exist in your language.


Ough, thank you! Yes, articles are really difficult for us. 
But I should at least remember the expression 'God have mercy (on smb)'...


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## Thomas1

I agree on that the present setup of the forum is handy. I've just thought about possible future arrangaments of this part of WR forums. I was wondering what if there's going to be a lot of threads on two or three Slavic languages that will deserve separate forums. Would it be that each of them will get its own forum and the rest will still share a common one? Then, how will we be able to make threads on all-Slavic-languages topics?

Tom


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## Etcetera

Thomas1 said:


> I agree on that the present setup of the forum is handy. I've just thought about possible future arrangaments of this part of WR forums. I was wondering what if there's going to be a lot of threads on two or three Slavic languages that will deserve separate forums. Would it be that each of them will get its own forum and the rest will still share a common one? Then, how will we be able to make threads on all-Slavic-languages topics?
> 
> Tom


But what's the problem? 
German, Japanese, Arabic each has its own forum, but still you can find in the Other Languages forum some threads where some features of these languages are discussed in comparison with other languages. 
For example, here's a recent thread about Arabic/Maltese in the Other Languages forum.


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## Thomas1

No problem whatsoever. 

I was merely trying to find out what would happen with the Slavic Languages forum but maybe it's too distant future to discuss it now.

Tom


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## natasha2000

Carrie2 said:


> Also, I'm sure lots of people (mainly non-native speakers of Slavonic Languages, probably) wouldn't know whether a particular language was East, West or South Slavonic.
> Carrie2


 
So what? Ignorance is not an argument. Those who like and learn some Slavic language,  know which group this language belongs. And those who don't know, they should learn it, if they are interested in it.

On the other hand, I think that the movement of threads in Slavic languages is still too slow to seprate it. Even though if the gropus are made, some groups would have a lot more movement than the others, for example, Russian would have a lot greater movement than, for example, Serbian or Croatian, or even the whole South Slavic group al together.

What i want to say is - I wouldn't mind if it stays as it is, but I also wouldn't mind if some changes are introduced.


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## GoranBcn

natasha2000 said:


> On the other hand, I think that the movement of threads in Slavic languages is still too slow to seprate it. Even though if the gropus are made, some groups would have a lot more movement than the others, for example, Russian would have a lot greater movement than, for example, Serbian or Croatian, or even the whole South Slavic group al together.



Well, it's logical that Russian would have more movement... but who knows? Maybe there would be more people learning and asking questions about Polish and consequently west slavic languages forum would be more visted than the rest of the Slavic fora...
The number of speakers of a language doesn't assure at all that a particular forum will be more visited. Ukrainian, for instance, has around 40 million of speakers and you will hardly find threads about that language. Romanian has three times more speakers than Catalan and Catalan has its own forum and Romanian doesn't. There is no Chinese forum and in "Other Languages" you will rarely find threads about that language. 

Goran


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## natasha2000

GoranBcn said:


> Well, it's logical that Russian would have more movement... but who knows? Maybe there would be more people learning and asking questions about Polish and consequently west slavic languages forum would be more visted than the rest of the Slavic fora...
> The number of speakers of a language doesn't assure at all that a particular forum will be more visited. Ukrainian, for instance, has around 40 million of speakers and you will hardly find threads about that language. Romanian has three times more speakers than Catalan and Catalan has its own forum and Romanian doesn't. There is no Chinese forum and in "Other Languages" you will rarely find threads about that language.
> 
> Goran


 

Hi, my dear neighbor! 

No, I did not say that Russian would have more interest only because there are more Russians than Serbs or Croats. I said this on the basis of frequency of questions I noticed in the forum. I used word "movement" for this, not for the number of speakers. Maybe I did not choose the right word. There are a lot of threads on Russian, and Czech or Polish. On the other hand, there are very few treads about Serbian or Croatian, and people who ask it do not really study it, but rather have some text or some few words to translate it. Recently, I noticed some bigger flow of Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian native speakers. There are a lot more of them than earlier. When I registered, I thought I was the only one.. There were few Croats and that was all. So, in a year, things have changed for our language. In a year more, who knows? Maybe mods do separate Slavic languages in various forums because the conditions have been created...


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## übermönch

I like the way it is now, I'd even say it should be projected on Germanic and Italic languages to raise interest in Romanian, Swedish or Dutch. By the way, what about expanding the "Slavic languages" forum to Baltoslavic?


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## Etcetera

übermönch said:


> I like the way it is now, I'd even say it should be projected on Germanic and Italic languages to raise interest in Romanian, Swedish or Dutch. By the way, what about expanding the "Slavic languages" forum to Baltoslavic?


I'll try to explain. 
Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian), however close they may be to the Slavic languages, form a separate group. If we expand the Slavic Languages Forum to Baltoslavic, I'm just sure we'll keep on having separate threads on various Slavic languages and on Baltic ones. They're too different!


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## Jana337

Oh people, you are innovative! 

As I said above, I too am happy with the current setup but it is well possible that many of you would prefer separate fora for the three biggest (in terms of traffic) Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, Polish). I will gather your opinions in due time to make sure that I am not foisting my personal preferences on you.

Let me briefly address other issues:
The South Slavic family is too small to merit its own forum (click).
Baltoslavic - I do not understand more than 5 words and I am probably not the only one. Geography does not matter, language families do. Apart from a thread about Slavic influences on Baltic languages, I woulnd't know what common topic we could find.

Jana


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## Etcetera

Jana337 said:


> Baltoslavic - I do not understand more than 5 words and I am probably not the only one. Geography does not matter, language families do. Apart from a thread about Slavic influences on Baltic languages, I woulnd't know what common topic we could find.


That's it! 
Besides, there were very few topics where Latvian or Lithuanian were mentioned. And the only native speaker of a Baltic language at WR is Karuna (she's a Latvian). Of course, there may be other native speakers of Baltic languages who have registered at the Fora, but only Karuna participates in discussions.


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

Perhaps it should be done in the Comment and Suggestions forum, if it is the case, may it be moved ^^. 

Anyway, I would like to suggest the creation of another section for Slavic languages, at least one for Russian, so that other languages could have more space. Something like 'Russian' and 'Other Slavic languages'. I think it would make the forum more organised, because sometimes Russian threads occupy so much space that the other languages get lost there. 
Other suggestion would be a geographical division - Eastern, Western and Southern. 
The problem would be the 'All Slavic' messages.  

Either way, I think that the present Panslavic system is not the best.

Na shledanou.:


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## dudasd

Having all the Slavic languages gathered at one place - that is something precious to me. (Though I miss Medieval Slavonic - but maybe one day we will have it.  ) The most of us will lose if they get separated. Small indicators, like: (E) Russian, or (W) Polish, or (S) Serbian, or just visual rearranging, would make things easier for foreign learners.

I must add that I have already improved my understanding of other Slavic languages by pure reading the threads here. (I hope my "the"s and "a"s are at proper places.)


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## Tagarela

Hello,

Dudasd, well, I know that together we have some advantages, but if splitted some things would be more organized. We have so much Russian threads (nothing against Russian or Russia at all) that the messages about other languages get lost, and it would be better, of course, for Russian messages too. 
Romance languages are separeted, Nordic too, same Semitic ... so, why not Slavic? 

Edit: I´ve just counted the threads of the 5 last pages:
45 theads for Russian
9 Czech
1 Slovak
8 Polish
5 Croatian
1 Bielorussian (and no one replied)
3 Serbian
3 All Slavics

This kind of statistic is not perfect and I may counted wrong...either way, it shows that Russian could be separated. 
Ah, and for fure,if we look past pages, we will find Bulgarian, Ukrainian etc... but I think that 5 pages can give us a not too biased idea, since it varies a lot depends on users, some appear here one day, open 10 threads about the dialect of a small village spoken by three families and then disappear. 



* Althought I am not native English, but since Portuguese has articles too, I can say that your 'the' and 'a' are correct.


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## Lemminkäinen

Tagarela said:


> Romance languages are separeted, Nordic too, same Semitic ... so, why not Slavic?



Nordic Languages aren't split 

On the current first page, there are threads three days back. That's quite a difference compared to the larger forums where even one day's topics aren't all on the first page. The suggestion of a separate Russian forum and an Other Slavic languages forum is interesting, though I'm not sure I agree how much it's needed.


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

Sorry, Nordics are together, it is Germanic that is split. 

Than it would be a place only for Russian and the other for others including Russian compared to others. Altought it may be a little confusing. 
Any other suggestions? 


Na shledanou.:


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## Athaulf

Tagarela said:


> Dudasd, well, I know that together we have some advantages, but if splitted some things would be more organized. We have so much Russian threads (nothing against Russian or Russia at all) that the messages about other languages get lost, and it would be better, of course, for Russian messages too.



Yes, but with the usual rate of messages on this forum, it takes about three days to fill a single page in the list of threads sorted by default, i.e. by most recent activity (except that the traffic is a bit more intensive on weekends). Thus, anyone who checks the forum more often than about twice a week will get to see every thread title even if they don't even click past the first page, so I don't think non-Russian topics are getting lost. In my experience, messages about Croatian/Serbian/etc. certainly aren't disappearing unnoticed. Unfortunately, for some languages on the list, there are still very few regular contributors proficient in them, or even none, so questions about them occasionally remain unanswered, but splitting the forum certainly wouldn't fix this situation. 

Personally, I wouldn't like to see the forum split. I think there is a lot of interesting discussion - real, on-topic discussion, not chat - coming from users chiming into threads about languages that aren't their primary interest, and I think this sort of activity would be greatly reduced if the forum was split. Also, it would kill the possibility of starting interesting "all Slavic languages" threads.


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## zuzanadoma

Hello 

I vote for keeping the forum as it is. I certainly don't mind the majority of threads being Russian and enjoy reading through other Slavic topics in one place. Quite agree with Jana and Athaulf on the traffic issue.

Zuzana


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,
_
Konečně, to stalo_! Our Pan-slavism is done. 

I guess that it could be *Russian and non-slavic languages* and not only *Russian-English*, we had already some requests for Russian-Italian, Russian-French, althought they are not very frequent. Anyway, I think that *Russian and Non-slavic* languages would be a better name for the other part of Slavic forum. 

Na shledanou.:


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## Kolan

tagarela said:


> _konečně, to stalo_! Our pan-slavism is done.


Ура-ура! И нас посчитали!


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

Kolan, and you were counted? Hum?

Anyway, I still claiming that the Russian-English should have its name changed, perhaps, the best option would be simply Russian, since the Russian only discussion also are going to be held there. And then, only Russian and other slavics perhaps would be held here. Because, as it is now, one should post an request for a Russian-Portuguese translation, for example, in Other languages forum. 

Na shledanou.:


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## Kolan

Tagarela said:


> Kolan, and you were counted? Hum?


"Посчитать" in Russian has ambiguous meaning: _to count_ (t_o calculate_, as well) and _to consider_. That's what I wanted to say: the Russian posts in Slavic forum were considered and have been (re)counted. That's on the formal side. Informally for Russian natives, I believe, it alludes also to a well-known quotation from a Russian cartoon "Козлёнок, который считал до десяти" ("Baby goat who counted until ten", and applied this particular skill systematically to everyone whom he met), which became a popular expression "...Он и тебя посчитал!" 
http://www.film.ru/afisha/movie.asp?vg=22437
http://ru.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BA,_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D1%83%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BB_%D1%81%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C_%D0%B4%D0%BE_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B8_(%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BC)
http://multiki.arjlover.net/info/kozlenok.kotoryj.schital.do.desyati.avi.html
http://mults.spb.ru/mults/?id=140
One day his ability to count until 10 rescued a whole boat carrying fellow animals.

Ateja.


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## Nanon

*Трехкратное ура! ***
It is good to see that Russian has generated enough interest and traffic to justify a separate subforum.
I am confident that we love other Slavic languages enough to keep an eye on the "Other Slavic languages" subforum. 

However I share Tagarela and Kolan's suggestions about the name of the Russian subforum. I can't help thinking about my other languages. Whether East Slavic languages will be included may depend on the moderator(s) and administrator 's decision, maybe not only according to linguistic criteria but also to traffic. But my main question is about "Russian-English". 

Tagarela, a gente tem mais uma opção se este fórum virar de russo-inglês: o fórum de português...  (I'm not sure it would make Vanda's life easier, though).
 Back to the point: couldn't the Russian forum follow the same system as Portuguese, i.e. "from/to English and any other languages?" I think it would be easier for us to perform searches and read related information than using the "Other languages" forum.

Last but not last - thank you, Jana. And sorry if all these posts sound like criticism and ingratitude. I am sure you've been working a lot on this. And I saw that my own Russian-French, Russian-Spanish posts are still in the Russian-English forum, so I assume the nature or the name of the forum might be revised in the near future.


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,



Nanon said:


> Last but not last - thank you, Jana. And sorry if all these posts sound like criticism and ingratitude. I am sure you've been working a lot on this. And I saw that my own Russian-French, Russian-Spanish posts are still in the Russian-English forum, so I assume the nature or the name of the forum might be revised in the near future.



I join Nanon's politeness in case of I was a little rude, for sure, I recognize Jana's work here. It's just that the change was too suddenly and somethings, as those we have pointed here and in the Suggestion forum, aren't very sensitive. 

Nanon - mas acho que o fluxo Russo-Português não seria tão grande assim a ponto de descabelar a Vanda  

Kolan, thank you for the explanation. Unfortunelly my Russian doesn't go further than спацибо и до свидания so I can't understand this funny story. Who knows, in a distant future? Anyway большой спасибо, Колан!

Na shledanou.:


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

O! Someone (I mean, some two) else was counted! 

Let's see who is next - perhaps Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian  

But the dictionary thing sounds nice. 

Anyway, my regards to administrators and moderators for this work, their decision must be good I guess. 

Na shledanou.:


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