Talk:Serbs/Archive 1

message: Tough technically not new, I nominate this for New articles on the main page. Nikola 09:28, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: New articles nomination

message: "ill-intentioned neighbours"? "unavoidable minorities"? "still not united in one state"? Someone still hasn't mastered the art of controlling their chauvinism :o --Shallot 02:24, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: "sometimes ill-intentioned". I've thought for a long time how to translate "ponekad nedobronamernih". "Unavoidable minorities" I wrote in positive sense. And as for the "still not united" - it is a fact. Nikola 07:33, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: POV phrases

message: The following two passages were recently deleted by User:Nikola Smolenski with the claim that they are "unsubstantiated." 
:The diaspora languages of Serbian are Molise Serbian, Gradisce & Burgenland Serbian.
:3. Molise Serbs (Molise region of Italy), speaking a diaspora language called Molise Serbian + # Montenegrins (Montenegro) 
:4, 5. Gradisce Serbs and Burgenland Serbs (Burgenland region of Austria), speaking diaspora languages, Gradisce Serbian and Burgenland Serbian
I have no idea of the facts of the matter, but outright deletion is not usually the way to dispute someone's obviously substantive statements. Since I don't know the facts I'm not restoring this. Since it's apparently disputed, it probably should be sourced. Nonetheless, I think it would have been a lot more appropriate for Nikola to challenge the accuracy here on the talk page as a way of starting the discussion, rather than start by a deletion that inevitably threatens an edit war. -- Jmabel 23:11, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)
: I have not deleted them, but Shallot did. I investigated the issue and frankly have no idea wheteher these people are Serbs, Croats, Serbs and Croats, Serbo-Croats, Serbs who think that they are Croats, Croats who think that they are Serbs, or whatever and have chosen to remain neutral to the issue, at least until I find something more about it. It is discussed in more detail at Talk:Slavic peoples. Nikola 10:17, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Molise, Gradišće, Burgenland

message: Recent anon addition, moved here for discussion:
The proto-Serbs were part of the Caucasian Race much like the Georgians, Mingrelians, Lezghians, Ingush, and spoke a language simmilar to these peoples. At some point in the history of the Serbs, this Old Serb language stood side by side with the Slavic language in White Serbia (Porphyrogenitus) and likely even in the first 300 years leading up to the formation of the Serb state on the Balkans in the 9th century. Even to this day, the Serb language has at least a third as many words in its vocabulary than other Slavic languages. This is because of the influence of Old Serb and Illyrian as well as Turkish on the Slavic language spoken by Serbs today. Here is a list of Old Serb words which exist side by side with Slavic words in the modern Serb language.
(ignoring the misspellings...)
*"Caucasian Race" => part of a discredited 19th century view of race.
*I would need to see several solid scholarly citations before believing that at this date (presumably somewhere around the time of the Roman Empire) the Serbs were clearly distinct from other Slavic peoples, especialy from other Slavic peoples in Illyria.
*"has at least a third as many words in its vocabulary than other Slavic languages" What the heck? They all have "at least a third as many words..."  Three times that, in fact. What does this mean? And is this a claim that the Serbian language is somehow richer than Croatian? They are almost indistinguishable.
I suspect there is more wrong with this. If there's anything worth salvaging, please do. Gotta go now. -- Jmabel 18:30, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)
: It is one of the teories which perhaps could be noted, after toning down of course. It is copyvio of http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7681/origins.html anyway so I'll delete it completely. Nikola 15:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  dubious recently added paragraph 

message: User:195.252.86.74 recently made some rather major edits including radically changing population figures without citing any source and removing a lot of names from the list of famous Serbs. I have no idea of the facts of the matter, so I am just posting this here to draw others' attention to it. 
As for the population figures: could someone please give some numbers with a cited source? It's easy to say, "You can't replace numbers from a cited source with numbers pulled out of thin air." I can't really say "You can't replace numbers that were pulled out of thin air with different numbers pulled out of thin air." -- Jmabel 00:26, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)
And now another similar edit in the population area "USA: at least 2,000,000" was replaced by "USA:  165,000". Again, I have no idea of the facts, so I'm not reverting, but would someone please add some well-cited numbers? -- Jmabel|Talk 21:52, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
:I've heard about both numbers. AFAIK, US censa register only race and not ethnicity. So the number of an ethnicity has to be deduced somehow. The lower figure is probably only the number of people registered with the SOC, SUC, SND etc. while the higher is built starting with estimated number of immigrants from Serbia/Yugoslavia and calculating number of their descendants, which today probably includes people of Serbian descent who don't feel like Serbs. Nikola 10:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious recent edit 

message: I cleaned up a sentence that now reads, "Non-Serbs who studied the Serbian language include such prominent individuals as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and J. R. R. Tolkien; see list of Serbian language speakers, learners, etc.". I don't necessarily think this belongs in this article, though it probably belongs in Serbian language. This is about the Serbian language, not about Serbian ethnicity. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:35, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)
: But Serbian language is the language of Serbian ethnicity, and further the reason why were they learning the language is related to Serbian culture (Goethe was learning it so that he could read Serbian poetry in original; I'd love to know why Tolkien was). I think that one sentence can pass. Nikola 10:24, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language 

message: This is not a topic I care about, and since some anon seems to want to make it an edit war, I'm bowing out of it with this note. Tesla has been in and out of this article repeatedly, presumably in a quiet war about whether he counts as a Serb (since I can't imagine anyone was implicitly contending that he didn't make significant contributions to science and engineering or that those don't count as contributions to humanity). I had hoped to resolve this by writing, "Nikola Tesla (although several other ethnicities also claim him as their own)..." This qualifier has now been deleted with the comment "Croats don't claim him only that he is born in Croatia". I've run into Croats who claim him as their own. I've run into Hungarians who claim him as their own. I'm not saying they have good basis, but they do. I leave it here, others can duke this out. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:43, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)
:Nikola Tesla's father was a Serbian Orthodox priest. I'm sorry but how could he be Croat or Hungarian then? very much Serbian, to discredit him as a Serb I'd like to see hard factual evidence he wasn't rather than say he is every nationality in the world. That doesn't make sense, he's Serbian until they do a DNA test to prove otherwise which would find out he is Serbian anyways so there's no sense is arguing it. They just want Tesla, but they can't have him. (anon 22 July 2005)
THE TESLA LAST NAME ORIGINATED IN ROMANIA...THEY MOVED LATER TO SERBIA AND CROATIA....
NIKOLA TESLA HIMSELF WHO WAS BORN IN CROATIA CALLED HIMSELF CROAT AND WAS PROUD OF THIS, HE WOULD ALSO SAY HIS PARENST WERE SERBS .....SO NIKOLA IS CROAT FACT, HIS PARENTS SERBS FACT, BUT TESLA ORIGIN IS ROMANIAN.....FACT......THE ORIGIN HAS BEEN OVER LOOKED IN FAVOUR OF SERBS WHO ARE LOOKING FOR A NATIONAL HERO BUT EVEN THEY KNOW TESLA LAST NAME IS NOT SERBIAN...MAYBE ITS TESLANOVIC HAHAHAHA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.75.195 (talk • contribs) 14 Sept 2005
: (at risk of feeding troll with no lower case on keyboard): Or Teslescu? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nikola Tesla