Why Pomak will not be the next Slavic literary language

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discrimination of different serbian pronunciations from shtokavian dialect

Abstract This paper proposes a new methodology for discrimination of different pronunciations in the Shtokavian dialect of the Serbian language. At the first, the written language (Unicode text) is converted into codes according to the energy status of each character in the text-line. Such a set of codes is seen as a grayscale image. Then, the local structures of the image are explored by local binary operators. It creates a vector set which differentiates various pronunciations of the Serbian language. The experiment is performed on fifty documents given in Serbian language. A comparison performed between the proposed method and the n -gram method shows its clear advantage

Croatian Serb Culture, Language, and Minority Education Rights

This article examines the ongoing debate on national minority rights for Croatian Serbs in the spheres of education, identity, and minority language policies. The controversy results from research on legislative acts and integration strategies in the European Union, which are predominantly focused on citizenship issues and the integration of immigrant workers and less on the constitutionally recognised language rights of minorities and the new social space created after the collapse of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A new sense of identity emerged for the Serb minority in Croatia as a result of the post-war environment. The article provides an analysis of in-depth interviews between Croatian Serbs and Croatian cultural and academic professionals through boundary-work that emphasises the importance of cultural values and legal norms for the minority, especially in minority education (Models A, B, and C)

National Minority and the Rule of Law: The Case of Tatars and Tatar Language in Contemporary Russia

In July 2017, during a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations, in the framework of the Strategy of Russia’s national policy the Russian president declared that children should not be forced to study indigenous languages in the national republics of Russia. In November of the same year, the Republic of Tatarstan’s Parliament abolished compulsory study of Tatar language in schools, contrary to the Constitution of Russia and its Federal legislation providing equal legal statuses to Russian and Tatar languages in the Republic of Tatarstan. Tatars, being a Turkic nation with Islamic views, are the second largest ethnic population in Russia, where the dominant vector of national identity is orthodox and Slavic. Recently, the issue of Tatar identity and Tatar language is under pressure from political discourse which prevails over the legal order, and which may lead to a decrease in the level of multiculturalism in the country. The author concludes that the Rule of Law is at risk since the rights of minorities to an education in their native language, which are guaranteed not only by international treaties but also by the Constitution and Federal law of Russia, are being disregarded or opted out of by the new Law on Education in Russia

Varstvo narodnih manjšin na Balkanu: primer makedonskih manjšin

This dissertation has examined the approaches adopted by certain Balkan and Central European countries towards protecting their national minorities, with the primary focus being the position and rights of Macedonian minorities in the neighboring countries of the Republic of Macedonia. The dissertation has argued that the right to identity is in many ways, in combination with other minority rights, the quintessential right for minorities within the wider scope of human rights. The hypothesis is generated from the concept of minority protection in general, and tested by analyzing the minority protection provisions in certain Balkan and Central European countries, especially focused on the position and rights of Macedonian minorities in countries neighboring the Republic of Macedonia. It finds support in international judicial and quasi-judicial case-law, which confirms that protection of the separate ethno-cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities is the core of the international protection of minorities. Some authors contend that the \u27right to preserve a separate identity\u27 is one of the two collective human rights that international law affords to minorities in general. In other words, while the vast majority of rights concerning minority protection are formulated in an individualistic manner, designed to protect the \u27individual as a member of a minority\u27, these rights are based on the interest of minority groups and a fortiori require collective exercise. Correspondingly, it should be reiterated that the principles of minority protection are based on the concept of substantive equality, and, consequently, composed of two pillars, namely: 1) the principle of non-discrimination accompanied by individual human rights relevant to minoritiesand 2) special minority rights. The rationale behind the latter is to create conditions conducive to the protection and promotion of the ethno-cultural, linguistic and religious identity of minorities. It goes without saying that the right to mother tongue education in combination with linguistic rights and the right to participate in public and political life are of utmost importance for minority identity to flourish in the societies in which they live.Doktorska disertacija obravnava različne pravne pristope, ki so jih na področju varstva svojih narodnih manjšin sprejele nekatere balkanske in srednjeevropske države, pri tem pa je poseben poudarek dan položaju in pravicam makedonskih manjšin v sosednjih državah Republike Makedonije, torej v Albaniji, Bolgariji, Grčiji, Srbiji in na Kosovu. Hipoteza disertacije je, da je pravica do identitete, v kombinaciji z drugimi manjšinskimi pravicami, v širšem konceptu človekovih pravic za manjšino bistvenega pomena. Prav tako pa učinkovito zagotavljanje pravice do identitete nujno zagotavlja priznanje ali sprejetje obstoja določene etnične skupine v družbi, v povezavi z: 1) zagotavljanjem in spoštovanjem načela nediskriminacije pri uživanju pravic in svoboščin, pomembnih za narodne manjšine in njihove članeter 2) sprejetjem posebnih ali trajnih pravic. Tako hipoteza sledi izhodišču, ki izhaja iz mednarodnega prava in sicer, da je sistem zaščite manjšin obvezno sestavljen iz dveh stebrov. Razlog za obstoj posebnih ali trajnih pravic je ustvarjanje pogojev za varstvo in spodbujanje etnično-kulturne, jezikovne in verske identitete manjšin. Samoumevno je, da je pravica do izobraževanja v maternem jeziku v povezavi z jezikovnimi pravicami in pravico do sodelovanja v javnem in političnem življenju izjemnega pomena za identiteto manjšine, da bi le-ta lahko uspešno delovala v družbi, katere del je

Natural language processing for similar languages, varieties, and dialects: A survey

There has been a lot of recent interest in the natural language processing (NLP) community in the computational processing of language varieties and dialects, with the aim to improve the performance of applications such as machine translation, speech recognition, and dialogue systems. Here, we attempt to survey this growing field of research, with focus on computational methods for processing similar languages, varieties, and dialects. In particular, we discuss the most important challenges when dealing with diatopic language variation, and we present some of the available datasets, the process of data collection, and the most common data collection strategies used to compile datasets for similar languages, varieties, and dialects. We further present a number of studies on computational methods developed and/or adapted for preprocessing, normalization, part-of-speech tagging, and parsing similar languages, language varieties, and dialects. Finally, we discuss relevant applications such as language and dialect identification and machine translation for closely related languages, language varieties, and dialects.Non peer reviewe