Wiktionary:About Belarusian

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

This page explains considerations (beyond those covered by general policies) which apply to Belarusian entries.

Wiktionary:Entry layout explained is the principal policy on formatting entries. This document supplements that policy.

Entries

Etymology

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

First see WT:ETY. As for the ancestors of Belarusian, there were some old discussions:

• Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2017/March#Old_Russian_vs._Old_East_Slavic;_Old_Slovak,_Old_Ukrainian,_Old_Belarusian,_etc.
• Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2022/September#“Old_Ruthenian”_language
• Old Ruthenian & co.

Some example entries, eventually intended to be role models of proper etymology section formatting: ма́лпа (málpa), маро́зіва (maróziva), пэ́ўны (péŭny) and час (čas).

Quotations

First see WT:QUOTE for the general guidelines. The Belarusian entries are using either Template:quote-book or Template:quote-journal, depending on whether the quotation in question is from a book, from a newspaper article or from a publication in a literary magazine.

Old books, which already entered public domain

The 19th and early 20th century Belarusian literature, including numerous Łacinka examples, can be found on the Belarusian Wikisource website. Many texts are backed by the scans of old paper books, making them a perfect choice for WT:CFI reasons. The site supports a flexible search functionality with the wildcard character '*', so it's possible to search for something like горны* or horny* (the Łacinka spelling) to find different possible declension forms of Belarusian words. Some of the books from Belarusian Wikisource are the translations of English books. For example, "Домбі і сын" is a translation of Charles Dickens's "Dombey and Son". This provides an opportunity to match the Belarusian sentences with their English original counterparts, e.g.:

• go to page 235 of that Belarusian book and take the following sentence: "Фларэнс зноў павярнулася да сваёй служанкі і пачала раіцца з ёю ўпоўголаса, а круглавокі Роб, памятаючы аб тайным загадзе свайго апякуна, пазіраў і слухаў."
• click on the page number link in the bottom right corner, and you will be taken to the approximate location of the same sentence in the English book.
• off by just one page is the English sentence: "Florence again turned to her maid and took counsel with her in a low voice, while Rob the round-eyed, mindful of his patron’s secret charge, looked on and listened."
• that's a chance to provide a nice quotation for either of the following words: зноў (znoŭ), служа́нка (služánka), ра́іцца (ráicca), упоўго́ласа (upoŭhólasa) / упаўго́ласа (upaŭhólasa), круглаво́кі (kruhlavóki), па́мятаць (pámjatacʹ), зага́д (zahád), апяку́н (apjakún), ...

Additionally check Template:RQ:be:s. This is the most practical avenue for adding Belarusian quotations to Wiktionary articles.

Old books, but still under copyright protection

The mid and late 20th century Belarusian literature hasn't entered public domain yet, so it can't be found on Wikisource. It also barely has any presence on Google Books. There's Belarusian N-corpus site, which covers some of the Belarusian texts from that period and can be used if you are really desperate. From the practical point of view, searching for quotations from these books isn't worth the trouble.

New modern 21st century books

Many books, that are being sold today, can be found on Google Books and the MediaWiki:Gadget-QQ.js gadget can be used to find and format quotations. But beware of Wiktionary:Copyrights and Wiktionary:Quotations#Copyright. It's always preferable to take quotations from the old public domain sources whenever such alternatives exist. Admittedly, for the quotations of neologisms or for new senses of the old words we don't have many options other than relying on the fair use doctrine in the United States.

Spelling

As a result of various historical events, the current Belarusian orthography and alphabets situation is rather complicated. But as far as the Belarusian literature in the form of the existing books and periodicals is concerned, only Łacinka, Taraškievica and the official orthography (Narkamaŭka) are relevant and have their own IANA tags .

Additionally, uncoordinated efforts of modern bureaucrats, employed by different departments, produced a number of mutually incompatible romanization schemes tailored for various niche purposes. Among these romanization schemes, the geographical names romanization and the passport names romanization are notable and can be encountered in real life on the road signs or in the passports. The geographical names romanization resembles Łacinka in the uncanny valley manner, but it isn't the real thing. Some examples:

Official orthography (be-1959acad)	Taraškievica (be-tarask)	Łacinka (be-Latn-tarask)	Geographical names romanization	Passport names romanization
спартсмен	спартсмэн	spartsmen	-	-
спаніэль	спаніель	spanijel	-	-
сімвал	сімвал	simvał	-	-
сымбаль	сымбаль	symbal	-	-
Плошча Незалежнасці	Плошча Незалежнасьці	Płošča Niezaležnaści	Plošča Niezaliežnasci	-
Святлана Алексіевіч	Сьвятлана Алексіевіч	Śviatłana Aleksijevič	-	Sviatlana Alieksijevich

Various automatic converters exist , but not all of them are perfectly accurate.

History

Classic orthography (Taraškievica)

• Up to the middle of the 19th century, all the existing scarce printed publications in contemporary Belarusian almost exclusively used the Latin alphabet , because by that time people gave up on the cumbersome old Church-Slavonic alphabet. Anyone familiar with Łacinka can easily read and understand these texts today, though there was a certain degree of variability in spelling.
• Then a disruptive ban of the Latin alphabet in 1859 caused some Belarusian authors to either stop trying to publish their works, resort to publishing them abroad or switch to the Cyrillic alphabet altogether, while additionally being subjected to heavy censorship in the Russian Empire. This ban was lifted in 1905 and many printed publications in Belarusian started to appear.

• In 1918, Branisłaŭ Taraškievič published Belarusian grammar textbooks for schools in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts, which standardized and summarized the already established practices and became the basis of Taraškievica orthography. Both Latin and Cyrillic scripts were supported and a reversible mapping existed between them.

• Since 1933, Taraškievica and the use of the Latin script got superseded and banned on the territory of the USSR, but still remained in use on the territory of Western Belarus and everywhere else.

• Taraškievica returned to the independent Belarus around 1991 after the collapse of the USSR in the form of newspapers and published books, but didn't make it to the Belarusian schools.

• In 2005, the modern normalization of Taraškievica was published. Since 2010 Taraškievica is officially banned on the territory of Belarus, but remains in use in printed publications outside of Belarus.

Official orthography (Narkamaŭka)

• In 1930s the soviet authorities were engaged in jailing and executing Belarusian linguists and writers and the Belarusian orthography reform of 1933 emerged as a part of these activities. This made it highly controversial and rejected outside of the USSR, causing the current split. Additionally, this reform only supported the Cyrillic script, banning the Latin script on the territory of USSR.

• In 1957 there was an evolutionary update of this orthography standard and it came into force in 1959 two years later. That's what the be-1959acad IANA subtag refers to.

• In 2008 another update happened, primarily as an answer to the Taraškievica 2005 standardization. All printed publications in Belarusian were legally required to switch to it by 2010. The ban on printing or importing books and newspapers using any other orthography standard also came into force on the territory of modern Belarus.

Dzejasłovica

• This orthography variant was in use in the literary magazine "Дзеяслоў" from 2002 and up until the 2010's ban. It combines the phonetically accurate spelling of the native Belarusian words from Taraškievica with the spelling of the foreign loanwords from Narkamaŭka, basically rejecting the Taraškievica's prescribed rules of adopting foreign loanwords. Some people are using this spelling naturally and independently on their own without even knowing that it has a name.

The Wiktionary policy related to spelling of Belarusian words

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

• The main Wiktionary articles of the Belarusian words use the official Narkamaŭka orthography. The only reason for this is that this spelling is well documented in a large number of academic dictionaries and also in the https://github.com/Belarus/GrammarDB database. Example: сліва (sliva).
• Taraškievica words get their own Wiktionary articles and are listed in the "Alternative forms" section of the main article. Example: сьліва (sʹliva).
• Łacinka words are listed in the "Alternative forms" section of the main article. Creating separate Wiktionary articles for such words is not actively encouraged, but isn't prohibited either. They are still the subject of the usual WT:CFI rules. Example: śviatło.
• The Geographical names romanization scheme is not Łacinka. It may be listed in the "Alternative forms" section, but only if the word in question is a name of a settlement. The word also needs to be tagged with a special "Geotranslit" label.
• The quotations taken from the old books preserve their original orthography, but it's also possible to use the |norm= property of the {{quote-book}} template to provide the modern official orthography normalization and stress marks.

Criteria for inclusion

The criteria for inclusion with respect to Belarusian terms are the same as Wiktionary's general criteria for inclusion. There are a few caveats though. Almost all Belarusians learn both languages in school, but Russian is the dominant language for many people. And they are inadvertently making mistakes. Some examples:

Russian	English translation	Belarusian translation	What's wrong?
фамилия	familia surname	фамілія прозвішча	A native Russian speaker may be tempted to use a similarly sounding word without realising that it's a false friend in a different language.
точка зрения	dot of view point of view	кропка гледжання пункт гледжання	A native Russian speaker may be tempted to disregard the context and do a literal word by word translation without realizing that the result sounds awkward or doesn't make sense in a different language.
-Спасибо! -Пожалуйста!	-Thanks! -Please! You are welcome!	-Дзякуй! -Калі ласка! Няма за што!

With a strictly formalistic approach to the attestation process, it's likely possible to almost always find the required 3 citations of any arbitrary Russian word mistakenly mixed into Belarusian speech or text in the durably archived sources somewhere out there. In general it's necessary to be careful with citations, unless they are taken from the books, written by well known notable Belarusian authors. But even citations from books may be problematic if they deliberately depict speech of a foreigner for artistic purposes:

• 2019, Зоя Доля, Акно ў замежжа (зборнік), Litres, →ISBN:

  – Алег можайт сделать тарелка мой друг? – Ды запраста. Няхай твой сябар завітае да мяне на выходныя, дамовімся аб аплаце і падключым яму Альджазіру.

  – Aljeh móžajt sdjelatʹ tarjelka moj druh? – Dy zaprasta. Njaxaj tvoj sjabar zavitaje da mjanje na vyxódnyja, damóvimsja ab aplacje i padključym jamu Alʹdžaziru.

  (please add an English translation of this quotation)

For example, the bold part of the text from the citation above is not written in Belarusian. Trasianka speakers are sometimes featured as the characters in books or skits and they don't represent the actual Belarusian language either.

Provisional guidelines (yet to be discussed in WT:BP):

• if something looks like a transliterated Russian word and can't be found in big academic Belarusian dictionaries, then merely 3 citations from Google Books may be insufficient to attest it.